Classification of warm and cold water events in the eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean

For the tropical Atlantic Ocean two phenomena showing anomalous sea surface temperature (SST) warming have been described: the Atlantic Ni ˜ no in the equatorial Atlantic and the Benguela Ni ˜ no off the Angolan coast. In this study, both Ni ˜ no types are integrated into a new set of SST regions and the definition of a robust standardized index for the longterm period 1870–2011. Comparisons of these regions and indices show a close connection between anomalous warming and cooling in the equatorial Atlantic and the Benguela region. Therefore, instead of considering equatorial Atlantic and Benguela warm and cold events separately, we propose to classify them into three subtypes of one comprehensive Atlantic Ni ˜ no. Copyright  2013 Royal Meteorological Society