THE IMPACT OF SEA-LEVEL DATA ASSIMILATION ON THE LAMENT MODEL PREDICTION OF THE 1997 98 EL-NINO/

Assimilating the sea level data from tropical Pacific tide gauges grea tly improved the Lament model prediction of the 1997/98 El Nino while retaining its overall performance during the past few decades. The imp lication is that the Lament forecast system is limited by the observat ional data used for initialization probably probably as much as by its simplified model physics. The sea level measurements in the vicinity of the equator are extremely effective in correcting the model ocean s tate and preconditioning it for ENSO prediction.