The geography of the Pilot moored Research Array in the Tropical Atlantic (PIRATA) was especially designed to observe the two main modes of climate variability in the tropical Atlantic: the equatorial mode (equivalent to the warm events in the Pacific Ocean), and the meridional mode, also known as the dipole mode. This paper is an attempt, using the first available PIRATA data, to evaluate the presence of the two modes, as well as their relationship with the current array configuration.