Altimetric measurements of sea surface height at two locations in the western tropical Pacific Ocean are compared to estimates of the dynamic sea surface height computed from cotemporal surface-to-bottom temperature/salinity measurements on moorings and acoustic travel time measured by bottom-moored inverted echo sounders. The results show statistically high correlation between the in situ measurements at periods greater than 5 days and between the altimeter and in situ measurements at periods greater than 20 days. The rms difference between any two modes of observation is consistently between 2 and 3 cm. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995