Animations of Weekly SST Anomaly Maps from January 3, 1996 to July 1, 2009
Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The following four animations of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies were created using the mapping feature (Full Version) of the NOAA NOMADS system for the weekly OI.v2 SST data:
The “Contour interval for var1” was set at 0.2 deg C to bring out the lower-intensity temperature anomalies. “white” was set at “0” so that blues represented negative anomalies and reds represented positive anomalies. All four videos last for approximately 2 1/2 minutes.
Please click on the videos to watch them in a larger size at YouTube. There they can be expanded to full screen and set to high definition.
ATLANTIC OCEAN
The North Atlantic has the highest SST anomaly linear trend of all of the ocean subsets. Refer to my post Putting The Short-Term Trend Of North Atlantic SST Anomalies Into Perspective. And of the three major ocean subsets, the Atlantic Ocean has the highest OHC linear trend. This is illustrated in my post Levitus et al (2009) Ocean Heat Content – Comparison of The Ocean Basin Data. Does the Atlantic SST Anomaly Animation help show the reasons?
In addition to the surges of heat in the North and South Atlantic during El Nino events, there are a number of paths that warm SST anomalies enter the South Atlantic during ENSO neutral and La Nina periods. Occasionally, the Benguela Current carries these warm water anomalies north along the Southwest Coast of Africa, where they are then carried west by the Atlantic Equatorial Currents. The warm anomalies either return to the South Atlantic, following the currents of the South Atlantic gyre, or they enter the North Atlantic. Once in the North Atlantic, they travel north, and appear to do that quickly. These additions of elevated SST anomalies during La Nina and ENSO-neutral periods also help explain why There Are Also El Nino-Induced Step Changes In The North Atlantic.
Atlantic Ocean SST Anomaly Animation 1996 to 2009
INDIAN OCEAN
The Indian Ocean animation shows very “noisy” SST anomalies, without any obvious reoccurring pattern. I was hoping to illustrate evidence of the Indian Ocean Dipole. In a future post, I’ll try to do so.
Indian Ocean SST Anomaly Animation 1996 to 2009
PACIFIC OCEAN
ENSO events stand out in the Pacific Ocean SST anomaly animation. It is possible to differentiate between traditional El Nino events like the 1997/98 El Nino (initially forms in the eastern equatorial Pacific) and the El Nino Modoki events of 2002/03 and 2004/05 (initially form in the central equatorial Pacific). Occasionally, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) pattern in the North Pacific (north of 20N) makes its presence known, as does the basin-wide pattern of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO).
In a future post, I’ll discuss a sequence of events that appears to occur during traditional El Nino events. Note how, before the formation of the 1997/98 El Nino, the Humboldt Current carries warm Southern Hemisphere SST anomalies up along the west coast of South America to the eastern equatorial Pacific. Yet RSS MSU TLT Time-Latitude Plots (refer to RSS MSU TLT Time-Latitude Plots…) clearly show that the majority of the heat from the 1997/98 El Nino was transported to the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Does this mean that El Nino events transport heat from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere?
Pacific Ocean SST Anomaly Animation 1996 to 2009
GLOBAL
In addition to the processes that appear in the videos of the three major oceans and the interactions between them, the Global SST anomaly animation also shows the seasonal shifts in the SST anomalies within the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. There also appears to be a shift between them, where the higher SST anomalies appear during the summer months for each hemisphere.
Note also that the Indian Ocean anomalies no longer seem so noisy.
Global SST Anomaly Animation 1996 to 2009
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I suppose it would be close to impossible, but animating the synoptic charts in sync with this data would be an interesting analysis. Reason for this hare-brained idea is that atmospheric lows seem to be powerful forces, often developing into hurricanes/cyclones, while Highs, just well, remain highs.
In terms of the Plasma model the idea is that the lows are driven by electric currents in dark plasma mode, and as the oceans are, compared to the land, electrically more conductive, all sorts of possibilities might emerge which might shed light on what might be driving these oscillations etc.
Longer term drivers would be in the mantle powering surge tectonics as postulated by Leybourne etc, and those mantle surges would have to be linked, somehow, to the sun via the plasma model.
Just a few ideas to bounce around 🙂 After all if it isn’t CO2, what the heck else could it be.
Very nice work Bob.
You must have invested quite some quality time to produce these animations.
They are great.
Thanks for a job well done.
I agree with Ron, this was very well done. Thanks Bob.
What happened in 2004, there was so much red, I thought I was passing out.
Very mesmerizing but hard to internalize. I have to focus on one small part – say the eastern Pacific off B.C. and Washington State – and glance at the dates rolling by above. Then pick another location and watch again.
As a linkage to current news the monsoon, though a bit late, seems to be underway in India. Someone with a specific-locational interest that could overlay with Highs & Lows, Jet Streams and local weather could use these animations and tell a good story.
I now have to get on with some other things, really, but thanks for the post.
Thanks for the hard work which went into these excellent animations.
The global animation was the most impressive to me, as it seems to show that SST anomaly often has an opposite trend in the NH to whats happening in the south.
I thought it was also a good illustration of just how chaotic the system is, with tantalisingly similar patterns occurring over time, but never in exactly the same place or to the same degree. Try modelling that into a GCM – no chance!
What strikes me is that many parts of the North Atlantic SST are always red. How can you have a temperature continually above average? What is the time period they used as the zero baseline? Since satellite data has only been available since 1979, can any trust be put in these anomalies, as the elapsed period to generate a basin-wide average is just a drop in the ocean.
Why is it that much of the North Atlantic SST is way above it’s average in this movie?? What time period did NOAA use to create the zero baseline??
Having seen a number of discussions about the regularly (and naturally) disintegrating Wilkin ice shelf (amongst others in the Antarctic penninsula) I noticed an awful lot of red washing around said penninsula, especially recently. How much would this affect the temperature anomalies being recorded there?
I was wondering the same thing Ray Boorman. The anomaly is compared to what period. I noticed that the area between Greenland and England was almost always above average. Is this Lake Wobegone where all the children are above average? or in this case, all the anomalies.
Pretty cool stuff. I haven´t recognized any CO2 fingerprint though 😉
I just noticed that very hot summer 2003 in central Europe went alongside with strongly positive Atlantic SST (AMO). The last powerful La Nina occured several months before the deepest temperature drop, which downpeaked in May 2008 so there is obvious lag. Weak La Nina conditions from early 2009 has been just reflected in recent UAH/RSS temperature drop to 79-00 average.
Oceans obviously rule the climate.
@RAYQ MCMULLEN, during the period above, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation was strongly positive.
http://i39.tinypic.com/o5vps9.jpg
As soon as it went to neutral lately, UK experienced pretty good winter. Imagine when it goes negative :o)
Fascinating, it is, but heat content it isnt.
The heat content is different according to the real temperature, so I do not see how any conclusions can be made about heat transport.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
In the southern ocean when it is 6 C and the anomaly is 1C can one seriously think that the same energy/heat is involved as in the tropics where the temperature is 30 C for the same anomaly?
This whole concept of anomaly is anomalous. It only has meaning for people sitting in a specific place and reminiscing of how hot/cold it used to be. Not about heat transport.
An excellent presentation backed by a lot of work.
It provides support for my contention that there are variations in the rate of energy emission to the air in all the oceans all the time and that we need to assess the net trend in energy flow from ocean to air at any given point to diagnose a warming trend or a cooling trend in the air. Sometimes the oceans offset one another and at other times they are in phase with each other.
I have suggested a shortcut in proposing that because the ocean SSTs set the rate of energy flow through the air they will also dictate the relative sizes and positions of all the air circulation systems so examination of those will diagnose a current temperature trend in the air.
Those poleward shifts of the air circulation systems show warming of the air globally. Equatorward shifts (as now) show cooling of the air globally.
The progress of heat energy from ocean to ocean is also illuminating since we clearly have a main driver in the Pacific though it is modulated at varying rates by the other oceans over time.
The net flow through the oceans from equator to poles is clearly indicated together with the transfer of energy from southern hemisphere to northern hemisphere which obviously moves more energy across the equator than is permitted by the circulation systems in the air.
That last point is highly relevant to Arctic ice varability. There is clearly a large movement of energy from initially the Pacific through the south Atlantic and then into the north Atlantic with a funnelling effect into the Arctic Circle where warmer water under the ice has profound effects. If that flow of energy slackens due to a negative PDO commencing some years earlier then the Arctic ice will recover some 8 to 10 years later which is exactly what we are now seeing.
Ray Boorman: You wrote, “What strikes me is that many parts of the North Atlantic SST are always red. How can you have a temperature continually above average? What is the time period they used as the zero baseline? Since satellite data has only been available since 1979, can any trust be put in these anomalies, as the elapsed period to generate a basin-wide average is just a drop in the ocean,” and, “Why is it that much of the North Atlantic SST is way above it’s average in this movie?? What time period did NOAA use to create the zero baseline??”
The high North Atlantic SST anomalies are a function of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is near to or at its peak during this period. The SST anomaly linear trend from November 1981 to January 2009 in the North Atlantic is ~0.264 deg C/decade while the global SST anomaly linear trend is ~0.0948 deg C/decade. Refer to my post “Putting the Short-Term Trend of North Atlantic SST Anomalies into Perspective”.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/putting-short-term-trend-of-north.html
To answer your base period question, NOAA uses an SST climatology that was created with this dataset and others to calculate SST anomalies. The base period listed is 1971 to 2000.
And another reason why the North Atlantic is always red is based on the contour interval (0.2 deg C) I used to bring out the smaller anomalies in the other oceans. The following is global SST anomaly map with the contour interval set at 0.5 deg C.
http://i26.tinypic.com/23tl3xg.jpg
If I had used a larger contour interval like that for the videos, the temperature scale would have been greater. Many of the “red areas” would have been replaced with yellows and oranges, but all of the smaller anomalies, the ones I wanted to bring out, would have been lost in the white areas.
Nice presentation
I hope that schools pick up on it, it shows how dynamic the planet is but also shows the stochastic nature of the variability. A great educational tool.
>>>The heat content is different according to the real
>>>temperature, so I do not see how any conclusions
>>>can be made about heat transport.
Yes, it would be nice to have an actual temperature animation, to compare with the anomaly presentation.
(Not that I don’t appreciate the huge effort that has gone into producing this)
Ralph
What are the reasons, these two SST anomalies are quite different at some places?
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.7.13.2009.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
I already thanked Bob for his hard work in producing these animations on another thread where he gave a few of us a sneak preview, and I thank him again here. No small amount of time invested.
I’m still watching these over and again before coming to conclusions. I recently got some insight into the way the oceans absorb heat during high runs of solar cycles and dissipate it again during solar minima and low runs of cycles. After doing some calcs, confirmed as correct by Leif Svalgaard, I’ve found we’ve been sold a dummy by the AGW crowd, who have estimated ocean heat content at a level consistent with their 1.7W/m2 radiative imbalance. The figures don’t add up. The truth is, the imbalance during 1993-2003 was more like 4W/m2. This knowledge has helped me understand how much stronger the ocean is as a driver of the atmosphere than previously thought.
I take Anna V’s point about heat transport across varying temperature belts, and am of the tentative opinion that the Atlantic runs it’s own parallel to el nino processes. Watch the spike of west-east red between South America and Africa mimic the bigger Pacific events, but at different times.
I’m sure Bob is right about currents and their destinations, but I think we have a whole lot more to discover about the ocean and it’s mysterious heat transport systems too.
The Sixteen mm of thermal expansion which took place 1993-2003 was a result of a huge amount of extra heat stored from the run of short, high amplitude, short minimum cycles in the late C20th. It was stored right down to the thermocline according to a comparison I’ve made between the average temp increase of the upper 700m and the SST increase over the period. How does it get there? There are mysteries in salinity, density and temperature to solve.
Unlike Bob, I haven’t yet studied each ocean basin in detail, but the overall picture is clear to me. Now I need to do for the understanding of subsurface heat storage/release what Bob has done for our understanding of SST’s and the links between them and atmospheric events and circulations.
Hats off to you Bob!
anna v: You wrote, “Fascinating, it is, but heat content it isnt. The heat content is different according to the real temperature, so I do not see how any conclusions can be made about heat transport…” “…In the southern ocean when it is 6 C and the anomaly is 1C can one seriously think that the same energy/heat is involved as in the tropics where the temperature is 30 C for the same anomaly?”
I’m not sure where you’re going with this. If we look at an illustration of Thermohaline Circulation…
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Thermohaline_Circulation_2.png
…surface and subsurface currents transport energy in the form of heat around the globe. When surface currents carry it North in the South Atlantic, the heat is transported from the Southern Ocean to the tropical Atlantic.
You also wrote, “This whole concept of anomaly is anomalous. It only has meaning for people sitting in a specific place and reminiscing of how hot/cold it used to be. Not about heat transport.”
As shown in the animations, those SST anomalies travel. Surface water that’s warmer or cooler than “normal” is carried from one location to another, and those anomalies move from high latitudes to the tropics and from the tropics to high latitudes. If not “heat transport”, how else would you choose to describe it?
annav
This whole concept of anomaly is anomalous. It only has meaning for people sitting in a specific place and reminiscing of how hot/cold it used to be. Not about heat transport.
That is a great point.
Ralph Ellis: You wrote, “Yes, it would be nice to have an actual temperature animation, to compare with the anomaly presentation.”
All you would really see is the seasonal shift (north and south) in sea surface temperature. Keep in mind the scales we’re dealing with. Here’s the SST map that anna v linked:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
Its span is 35 deg C. But for the animations, I’ve set the contour level at 0.2 deg C so the span is 2.8 deg C.
UK Sceptic: You wrote, “Having seen a number of discussions about the regularly (and naturally) disintegrating Wilkin ice shelf (amongst others in the Antarctic penninsula) I noticed an awful lot of red washing around said penninsula, especially recently. How much would this affect the temperature anomalies being recorded there?”
How much of that red is attributable to ENSO events?
Refer to Schneider and Steig (yup same Steig), PNAS paper is “Ice cores record significant 1940s Antarctic warmth related to tropical climate variability.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/34/12154.abstract
Abstract:
“Although the 20th Century warming of global climate is well known, climate change in the high-latitude Southern Hemisphere (SH), especially in the first half of the century, remains poorly documented. We present a composite of water stable isotope data from high-resolution ice cores from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This record, representative of West Antarctic surface temperature, shows extreme positive anomalies in the 1936–45 decade that are significant in the context of the background 20th Century warming trend. We interpret these anomalies—previously undocumented in the high-latitude SH—as indicative of strong teleconnections in part driven by the major 1939–42 El Niño. These anomalies are coherent with tropical sea-surface temperature, mean SH air temperature, and North Pacific sea-level pressure, underscoring the sensitivity of West Antarctica’s climate, and potentially its ice sheet, to large-scale changes in the global climate.”
It seems to me that it would seem logical to conclude that the current bout of warming in the Western Antarctic could be attributable to the recent almost three-decade-long bout of ENSO activity that has been dominated by El Nino events.
That’s part of this post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/recent-antarctic-warming-attribution.html
I understand the usefulness of animnation, but I would like to see a few graphs of the trend in each of the three oceans.
Juraj V., You asked, “What are the reasons, these two SST anomalies are quite different at some places?”
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.7.13.2009.gif
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
For the most part they look similar, but there are some minor variations. They do have different scales so that would alter the visual impacts.
I emailed Unisys a few months ago and asked the source of their SST anomaly data, but I received no reply.
Nice job! I too would like to see a movie of the original temperature data.
Indeed, why the focus on anomalies, rather than original temperature data, by climatologists, at least in the global “climate change” context? Suppose that at each time point t you calculate the global average anomaly A(t), then use linear regression to estimate the rate of change in A over time. The answer is the same as you would get if you used the original temperature data. The global average temperature at any time differs from A(t) by the global average baseline, which is neither a function of time nor space.