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This presentation will report on work in progress to study the surface circulation and heat flux in the tropical and north Pacific. A linear steady state Ekman-Geostrophic model is used to estimate surface velocity from surface winds (scatterometry or NWP analyses) and sea level gradients (altimetry). Linear coefficients are derived from a regression analysis with WOCE/TOGA surface drifters. Calibrated surface current maps are then generated from the satellite data sets. An important issue is the mean sea level reference for altimetry. The relative merits of the Levitus vs OGCM fields is being evaluated. Initial results from the tropical Pacific using Levitus show the major equatorial currents and salient variability features, except the equatorial eastward jets. Improvement here will require adding unsteady terms to the model. The following additional topics will be addressed in preparation for the workshop: 1) Including unsteady terms in the model, 2) Extending the analysis to the subtropical and subpolar north Pacific, 3) Using satellite SST to calculate the surface heat flux divergence.
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