| Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the eastern tropical Atlantic are crucial for climate variability within the tropical belt. Despite this importance, state-of-the-art climate models show a large SST warm bias in this region. Knowledge about the seasonal mixed layer (ML) heat budget is a prerequisite for understanding SST mean state and its variability. Within this study all contributions to the seasonal ML heat budget are estimated at four locations within the Atlantic cold tongue (ACT) that are representative for the western (0 degrees N, 23 degrees W), central (0 degrees N, 10 degrees W) and eastern (0 degrees N, 0 degrees E) equatorial as well as the southern (10 degrees S, 10 degrees W) ACT. To estimate the contribution of the diapycnal heat flux due... |
