NOTES: 20 JUN 97 NOAA's Climate Prediction Center has officially announced -- ENSO Advisory: 10 Jun 97 -- http://nic.fb4.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ that the present ENSO event has not been this robust since 1983. Our data [since 1981] show no event of this magnitude during the month of June! Anomalous SSTs close to + 5 deg C can be seen between Galapagos and South America from Ecuador to Peru...more of these elevated SSTs are persisting in the eastern Pacific from the Gulf of Alaska in the north to the coast of Chile in the south. The only area of below normal SSTs lies NW of Hawaii...this has been a persistent feature for nearly one year. Off Africa, in the tropical North Atlantic, SSTs continue to show positive anomalies, despite frequent outbreaks of airborne/tropospheric dust that often reach as far west as the Antilles [these aerosols have been shown to typically reduce the satellite's capability to make an accurate SST measurement...when this occurs, satellite SSTs will show values BELOW in-situ values. The NOAA's Hurricane Center is sponsoring several surface-truth buoys for this area, due to be deployed in August. This will help resolve any possible SST (and SST anomaly) errors in this hurricane generation area]. Positive SST anomalies continue over much of the North Atlantic from Europe to the Labrador Sea, south of Iceland, while below normal SSTs persist off the NE coast of the US and off Newfoundland. In the Southern Hemisphere the 15-year trend of increasing negative SST anomalies continues. This is especially evident in the South Atlantic. A series of ENSO SST anomaly/sea level charts can be found under "WHAT'S NEW" at our Ocean Division site -- "under construction": [http://wesley.wwb.noaa.gov/eileen/] AES