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The surface zonal and meridional transports of atmospheric heat and moisture are estimated
along the surface by 
, 
, 
, and 
. The zonal and
meridional wind speed used in these terms, 
and 
, are corrected
as discussed previously and adjusted to a reference height of 10 m.
In the calculation of 
and 
,
the wind components are multiplied by the air temperature measured in
Kelvins. In the calculation of zonal and meridional moisture flux,
each wind component is multiplied by the specific humidity, measured
in grams per gram (yielding units of m/s). Notice that (,)
is not the vertical flux of moisture and therefore is not sufficient
to quantitatively close the atmospheric moisture budget and provide a
check on E-P. However, at
the tropics the surface moisture divergence can be used to
qualitatively assess the patterns of E-P.