Comparative characteristics of the sea surface temperature derived from data compiled by the Russian Hydrometeorological Centre and US National Meteorological Centre,in application to the El Niño event in 1991–1993

This paper provides calculations and an interpretation of the mean annual sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and the characteristics of the SST annual harmonic in the equatorial Pacific Ocean from April 1991 to February 1993, using data provided by the Russian Hydrometeorological Centre (RHC) and the US National Meteorological Centre (NMC). The magnitude of the mean annual anomalies and the SST annual harmonic amplitude in typical El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) regions, as derived from the RHC data set, are shown to be smaller than their NMC data-based counterparts, due to the considerable spatial smoothing of the original data provided by the RHC. However, in terms of quality, the two data sets agree well with one another, and quantitative discrepancies are rarely larger than the standard error of mean monthly SST determination.Translated by Vladimir A. Puchkin.