Observing long-period fluctuations of surface winds in the tropical Pacific: initial results from island data.

Abstract

The utility of studying low-frequency surface weather phenomena with long time series of meteorological data from tropical Pacific islands is demonstrated. The wind stress changes associated with El Nino events in the period 1950-78 are examined at seven locations. Power spectra of wind stress from three island stations are compared with concurrent wind stress spectra computed from merchant marine data. Many disparities are found and can be attributed to (sometimes severe) aliasing in the ship data.-from Authors