Upper-ocean thermal structure and heat content off the US West Coast during the 1997–1998 El Niño event based on AXBT and satellite altimetry data

During the 1997/1998 El Niño event, extensive oceanic temperature profiles were taken off the coast of California in January and February 1998 using Airborne Expendable Bathythermographs (AXBTs). These AXBT measurements are compared with altimetry-based upper-ocean temperature estimates using TOPEX and ERS satellite altimetry data. The altimetry-based temperature estimates are well correlated with the AXBT data, in particular when combining the two satellite data sets together to form a blended altimeter temperature estimate. Both the AXBT and altimetry data show that the nearshore coastal El Niño signal differed from that further offshore. The AXBT data show that near shore, the warm anomalies extended to much greater depths and had greater amplitude. A time series of the satellite-derived layer-averaged temperatures, averaged separately over the nearshore and offshore halves of the AXBT analysis domain, also shows a larger El Niño signal in the nearshore half. The role of local atmospheric forcing of the coastal oceanic temperature anomalies is analyzed using NCEP reanalysis and coastal upwelling data sets. The forcing terms include Ekman pumping, radiation, surface heat fluxes, precipitation, and alongshore wind stresses that drive coastal upwelling (expressed as a coastal downwelling index, CDI). The temperature forcing from all of the terms except the CDI anomalies are small. The CDI anomalies can explain most of the slowly varying temperature changes that occur near the coast during a two-year period spanning the El Niño event, as well as some of the larger amplitude, rapid (monthly) warming episodes that appear to be part of the El Niño signal. Several distinct rapid warming episodes, however, are not correlated with the CDI anomalies, and therefore we conclude that the nearshore El Niño signal originates from a combination of both a remote oceanic pathway and local atmospheric forcing.