"Equatorial oceans" refers to the vast bodies of water that are located near the Earth's equator, the imaginary line that divides the planet into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These oceans include parts of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans and are known for their warm temperatures, rich biodiversity, and important role in regulating the Earth's climate.
Full definition
It's important to understand that shoaling prior to closing occurred beginning as much as 5 Myr which began the major shift
in equatorial ocean circulation toward the poles.
This decrease in sea level is short - term, and when we switch back to El Niño conditions —
warmer equatorial ocean temperatures — the trend will reverse once again, and sea levels will start to rise steadily.
The Zhang & McPhadden papers do indeed highlight the spin - down and then spin - up of the wind - driven ocean circulation, but one place to start is: Interaction between the Subtropical and
Equatorial Ocean Circulations: The Subtropical Cell -(McCreary & Lu 1994).
To learn more
about equatorial ocean conditions in the Pacific, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deployed moored open - ocean buoys that track the sea - surface conditions.
Veizer, the geochemist, was studying oxygen isotope ratios in fossil crustaceans dating back more than 500 million years, a temperature proxy for
equatorial oceans during the entire eon of visible life on earth.
Mitrovica, J. X. & Milne, G. A. On the origin of late Holocene sea - level highstands
within equatorial ocean basins.
Contrary to what researchers previously believed, at these frequencies,
the equatorial ocean waves called Kelvin that spread from west to east across the whole of the Pacific ocean, have little effects on the surface.
My understanding of it is, is basically that every so often
the equatorial oceans get hot enough they blow away the clouds and release heat into space.
As found by Kutzbach et al. (2005) and Bosilovich et al. (2005), atmospheric moisture convergence increases over
the equatorial oceans and over high latitudes.
The results for change scaled by global mean warming are rather similar across the four scenarios, an exception being a relatively large increase over
the equatorial ocean for the commitment case.
This periodic warming of
the equatorial ocean often produces wet winters in California.