At all three locations, the winds were highly anisotropic. About half of the observed winds had directions within a narrow range of about 10 degrees centered on the mean wind directions of about 10, 60 and -5 degrees clockwise from north for the Tehuantepec, Papagayo and Panama jets, respectively.

Histogram of wind directions. (Enlarged image size: 6.89 K)

Time series of the major-axis component of wind in each of the 3 jets. (Enlarged image size: 11 K)

From the time series of the wind component along the major axis of variability in each jet, it is apparent that the mean and variance were both much larger and the time scales of variability were much shorter in the Tehuantepec jet than in the other two jets. The Papagayo and Panama jets both exhibited much stronger seasonal variability with tendencies for onshore flow during October and November at the end of the 1996 monsoon season and then again in June at the beginning of the 1997 monsoon season. Papagayo and Panama winds were almost exclusively offshore from December through May.

Autocorrelation functions of the major-axis component of winds for the 3 jets. (Enlarged image size: 7.08 K)

As evidenced by the lags at which the autocorrelation functions decay to a value of 0.4, for example, event time scales of variability were about 6 days for the Papagayo and Panama jets but only about 2 days for the Tehuantepec jet.

Wind speeds in the Papagayo wind jet were remarkably consistent, with 60% of the observations in the narrow range of 6-10 m/s offshore. Panama wind speeds were skewed toward a maximum in the range 5-8 m/s offshore and only 4% of the observed wind speeds exceeded 8 m/s. Tehuantepec wind speeds were spread over a broad range of 0-20 m/s offshore, with 25% of the observed wind speeds exceeding 10 m/s offshore.

Histogram of major-axis component of winds. (Enlarged image size: 7.16 K)