Transequatorial expendable bathythermograph (XBT) sections in the central Pacific are used to compute dynamic height profiles by means of temperature-sigma t relations. Dynamic height differences and geostrophic transport indices are derived, and it is demonstrated that they correlate extremely well for each of the four equatorial currents, making surface slope an excellent indicator of the geostrophic transport. This is due to the strong baroclinity of the equatorial current system. Indices of the strength of equatorial currents derived from computations of dynamic height, from sea level observations, and from a two-layer approximation agree very well, which allows the use of each method for monitoring. It is concluded that low-frequency variations of the equatorial current system may be suitably monitored by simple methods as repeated XBT sections or sea level observations.