FCI Member and FSU Professor Allan Clarke, with Assistant Scientist Lucia Bunge received a NSF grant to work on a new project "Understanding Observed Equatorial Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Ocean Interannual Flow Using Theory and High Resolution ECCO2 Model Results". Fundamental to an understanding of El Niño/Southern Oscillation climate fluctuations is an understanding of the anomalous equatorial Pacific surface flows which move the surface waters and change the sea surface temperature. Through the advent of accurate satellite altimeter measurements from late 1992 to the present, they now have an unprecedented opportunity to examine these flows not just in the Pacific, but also in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The main goal of this project will be to describe the anomalous equatorial surface flows in all three ocean basins and understand major aspects of them using theory and the dynamically consistent high resolution ECCO2 global numerical model. The scientific community is beginning to take advantage of the ECCO2 global ocean model, and a secondary benefit of the analysis will be the evaluation of the accuracy of this model and its dynamics near the equator in all three ocean basins. The foundational knowledge gained during this project should be helpful to the many scientists who will analyze future long records of equatorial climate data gathered in the multinational Atlantic Ocean PIRATA and Indian Ocean RAMA observational programs.