Automated analysis of the temporal behavior of the double Intertropical Convergence Zone over the east Pacific

► We investigate the spatial and temporal behavior of the double ITCZ phenomenon. ► An image analysis algorithm ('backbone') extracts the spatial extent of the dITCZ. ► Super- and semi-supervised hybrid HsMM/SVM approaches model the temporal behavior. ► The performance of the proposed methods can compete with human experts. ► We show the benefits of our algorithm on a short, illustrative 5-season period.