Interannual and interdecadal variabilities in SST anomaly over the eastern equatorial Pacific

Abstract The global sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly data from 1950 to 1996 were used to analyze spatial characters of interdecadal SST variations. A wavelet transform was made for the equatorial eastern Pacific SST anomaly time series. Results show that there are three remarkable timescale SST variations. 130-month interdecadal variation, 57-month interannual variation and 28-month quasi2-a variation. Based on this result, an El Nio event was predicted in the early part of 1997.