Interannual Variability of Surface heat fluxes and upper ocean under stratus cloud decks in Souteast Pacific

Recent IMET buoy measurements at 85W, 20S, conducted by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), provided ~4 year time series (to date) of fairly accurate surface heat, momentum and freshwater fluxes under the stratus cloud deck. However, it is not known how representative these flux estimates at a particular point are for broad scale variability in the stratus deck region. This study investigates the broad-scale variability of surface fluxes in this region, which are estimated from the gridded data including a variety of satellite measurements. Gridded surface flux estimates are first compared with the estimates from the IMET buoy data, showing that gridded estimates agree reasonably well with those calculated from the IMET data. The representativeness of IMET observation for broader scale variability in the entire stratus cloud deck region is discussed based on the map of surface fluxes around the IMET buoy. Also, surface flux estimates from the gridded data are extended for a longer time period, which includes several ENSO warm and cold events, to examine the impact of major ENSO events on the surface fluxes in this region.