Comparison of ADCP and ECCOv4r4 Currents in the Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent

Abstract

Abstract The Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) flows eastward across the Pacific at the equator in the thermocline. Its variability is related to El Niño. Moored acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) measurements recorded at 4 widely-separated sites along the equator in the EUC were compared to currents generated by version 4 release 4 of the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCOv4r4) global model-data synthesis product. We are interested to learn how well ECCOv4r4 currents could complement sparse in situ current measurements. ADCP measurements were not assimilated in ECCOv4r4. Comparisons occurred at 5-m depth intervals at 165°E, 170°W, 140°W, and 110°W over time intervals of 10-14 years from 1995-2010. Hourly values of ECCOv4r4 and ADCP EUC core speeds were strongly correlated; similar for the EUC transport per unit width (TPUW). Correlations were substantially weaker at 110°W. Although we expected means and standard deviations of ECCOv4r4 currents to be smaller than ADCP values because of ECCOv4r4’s grid representation error, the large differences were unforeseen. The appearance of ECCOv4r4 diurnal-period current oscillations was surprising. As the EUC moved eastward from 170°W to 140°W, the ECCOv4r4 TPUW exhibited a much smaller increase compared to the ADCP TPUW. A consequence of smaller ECCOv4r4 EUC core speeds was significantly fewer instances of gradient Richardson number (Ri) less than ¼ above and below the depth of the core speed compared to Ri computed with ADCP observations. We present linear regression analyses to use monthly-mean ECCOv4r4 EUC core speeds and TPUWs as proxies for ADCP measurements.