Long-Term Changes in the Equatorial Pacific Trade Winds

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Abstract
Past work has shown that surface zonal equatorial wind stress, zonally integrated from one side of the Pacific to the other, is the key variable for estimating long-term El Niño behavior in the eastern Pacific. The long-term behavior of this key variable is difficult to determine directly because of the paucity of the equatorial wind observations and because of false trends in the wind data introduced by gradual changes in the methods of wind measurement. However, surface pressure data generally does not suffer from these false trends and theory suggests that this key wind variable is linearly related to the difference (Δp) of surface atmospheric pressure between the eastern and western equatorial Pacific. Detrended COADS pressure in the eastern and western equatorial Pacific and post 1960 detrended equatorial wind stress zonally averaged across the Pacific were used to verify this relationship. Pressure difference and zonally averaged equatorial zonal windstress (τ) were highly correlated (r = −... Abstract Past work has shown that surface zonal equatorial wind stress, zonally integrated from one side of the Pacific to the other, is the key variable for estimating long-term El Niño behavior in the eastern Pacific. The long-term behavior of this key variable is difficult to determine directly because of the paucity of the equatorial wind observations and because of false trends in the wind data introduced by gradual changes in the methods of wind measurement. However, surface pressure data generally does not suffer from these false trends and theory suggests that this key wind variable is linearly related to the difference (Δp) of surface atmospheric pressure between the eastern and western equatorial Pacific. Detrended COADS pressure in the eastern and western equatorial Pacific and post 1960 detrended equatorial wind stress zonally averaged across the Pacific were used to verify this relationship. Pressure difference and zonally averaged equatorial zonal windstress (τ) were highly correlated (r = −...

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