Desarrollo de metodología para localizar la Zona de Convergencia Intertropical (ITCZ) mediante el post-procesamiento de datos de viento obtenidos del archivo de datos ERA INTERIM

Abstract

The intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) location can be derived from atmospheric variables like precipitation and cloudiness, nonetheless the physical nature of this zone is directly related with the convergence of wind current coming from Hadley circulation cells. In this document a new methodology to locate the ITCZ, using mainly the wind velocity vector field, obtained from ERA Interim atmospheric reanalysis, is described. This methodology can be integrated as a new instrument of a series of tools for the study of climatological variables that can be used for marine operations planning and execution in the Ecuadorian coast; whereby the extent of this study will be delimited for the region of the east Pacific Ocean, (Longitudes: 180º-285º). The developed methodology is based on data science, and it consists of six steps: exploration, cleaning, clustering, filtering, connection algorithm and statistical data processing, all of which are developed and executed in MATLAB language. The obtained statistics are presented as distributions and averaged values for forty-one years of data available, then it is possible to identify, for example: months with a shorter range of prediction, trends in the displacement of the ITCZ and patterns of atypical behavior in years that El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is active in the region.