Fig. 7: Temperature evolution and statistics of daily changes at 11.5°N, 23°W.

a Total kinetic energy derived from the slab model around the near inertial wave (NIW) event (similar to Fig. 5d; gray shading indicates the time defined around the NIW event for the local balance). b Sea surface temperature (SST) time series from the PIRATA buoy at 11.5°N, 23°W around the NIW event (gray line) together with the low-pass filtered SST time series using a 3-day Hanning window (black line), the ePIRATA mixed layer (ML) temperature (red line), and the SST climatology (blue line). The SST climatology for the full year is shown in the insertion. c Distribution of daily temperature change anomalies \(\left( {\frac{{\partial T}}{{\partial t}}} \right)\) converted from ePIRATA heat budget residuals (June 2006–December 2017). d Seasonal cycle of strong ML cooling and warming events (\(\frac{{\partial T}}{{\partial t}} < - 0.2\) °C day⁻¹ in blue and \(\frac{{\partial T}}{{\partial t}} > 0.2\) °C day⁻¹ in red) from the ePIRATA daily temperature change anomalies used in c.