Seasonal variability of turbulent heat fluxes in the tropical Atlantic Ocean based on WHOI flux product

The mean seasonal variability of turbulent heat fluxes in the tropical Atlantic Ocean is examined using the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) flux product. The most turbulent heat fluxes occur during winter seasons in the two hemispheres, whose centers are located at 10 degrees similar to 20 degrees N and 5 degrees similar to 15 degrees S respectively. In climatological ITCZ, the turbulent heat fluxes are the greatest from June to August, and in equatorial cold tongue the turbulent heat fluxes are the greatest from March to May. Seasonal variability of sensible heat flux is smaller than that of latent heat flux and mainly is dominated by the variations of air-sea temperature difference. In the region with larger climatological mean wind speed (air-sea humidity difference), the variation's of air-sea humidity difference (wind speed) dominate the variability of latent heat flux. The characteristics of turbulent heat flux yielded from theory analysis and WHOI dataset is consistent in physics which turns out that WHOI' s flux data are pretty reliable in the tropical Atlantic Ocean.