Altimetric sea level map time series of the tropical Pacific have been produced from the crossover differences generated in the first 17 months of the Geosat mission. To verify the validity of altimetric sea level so produced, they are compared with the dynamic height field derived by expendable bathythermograph (XBT) and island sea level data. Overall, the three fields show statistically significant correlation with each other. At island sea level stations, altimetric sea level, in general, has better correlation with island sea level than the XBT‐derived dynamic height. Complex empirical orthogonal function (CEOF) analysis (which is used to discern coherent structures from data contaminated by random errors) has been conducted on the altimetric sea level and XBT‐derived dynamic height field. The first CEOF modes (which each explain 70% of the variance of the respective field) correlate significantly better with each other than the original fields. The relatively short record is clearly dominated by the annual signal. Major features away from the equator are also observed to propagate to the w