Comparison of sea surface temperatures and marine air temperatures in the tropical Pacific

Abstract. In the study of the global climate, ocean temperature estimates use sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies instead of marine air temperature (MAT) anomalies. A key question to ask is whether biases result from this choice. In this article we employ hierarchical statistical models to investigate spatiotemporal differences between SST and MAT and their anomalies in the tropical Pacific. The analysis uses observations from the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) buoy network and the ERA5 data product. Our spatiotemporal modeling approach accounts for missing data in the observation network and allows for full uncertainty quantification. Our findings indicate evidence that SST and MAT are interchangeable in the tropical Pacific when we calculate seasonally adjusted monthly anomalies.