Daily variability in lower tropospheric winds over the tropical western Pacific is examined using data from a network of wind-profiling radars deployed during the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE). The amplitude of the diurnal cycle in both u and v at the the westernmost sites, located just to the east of the large island of New Guinea, is of the order of 0.5 ms-1, significantly larger than the diurnal cycle observed east of the dateline in previous studies. The larger diurnal variability is attributed to the pronounced nocturnal maximum in deep convection over the island of New Guinea; the influence of this diurnal circulation extends (with smaller amplitude) to the more distant profiler sites 10¿--15 ¿E of New Guinea. The semidiurnal cycle of the zonal wind is smaller in amplitude but coherent in phase at all sites; the meridional wind exhibits a negligible semidiurnal cycle. These results are consistent with the solar semidiurnal tidal oscillation in pressure and entirely consistent with previous studies of eastern tropical Pacific winds. Two of the profilers were deployed on ships rather than islands, and we find no systematic differences between the ship data and the small island data attributable to the complete absence of land at the ship sites. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995