The western Pacific warm pool observed from space

Over the past decade, significant observational, theoretical, and modeling efforts have been made to understand the coupled ocean-atmosphere system, especially in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Nevertheless, most oceanographic research on the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has focused on the eastern and central Pacific because of the large interannual SST (sea-surface temperature) anomalies and ecosystem disruptions in these regions. Less attention has been paid to the western Pacific even though the early stages of ENSO events may originate there. As a new component of the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) research program, the Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) focuses on the physical processes that play important roles in the coupling between the ocean and atmosphere in the western Pacific warm pool.