Click for larger image
Source: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html
h/t Arthur Glass
About a month ago I posted: La Nina is back…and was criticized by a few folks. Well compare the above to the image from that post below:
Click for larger image
On geothermal contribtions:
The ice has been retreating around Greenland. Study carefully the anomaly map
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-081228.gif
Seems to me geothermal is fairly probable. How on earth are temperatures 3 and 4 degrees up when waters leading up to there are much cooler?
Happy New Year everybody, and thanks to all who posted, and Anthony for making this all possible. It looks like some people are away for the holidays. Let’s not begrudge them a few days off. They will have plenty stuff to catch up on when they get back. Here are a few items not to get excited about. Everybody deserves a few days off.
IARC-JAXA’s latest data is December 31. They would normally have Jan 3rd preliminary data by now.
igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu hasn’t updated its dropdown menu to include 2009. Someone has already pointed out here that you can force it by specifying the dates for the two panels in the URL. E.g…
igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=01&fd=01&fy=2009&sm=01&sd=02&sy=2009
sets first month 01, first day 01, first year 2009, second month 01, second day 02, and second year 2009.
Sea Surface Temp anomalies at http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html don’t have any data for 2009 yet.
The UAH daily temps appear to have a glitch. I’ve already sent them a polite note advising that the 2009 data is overwriting the 2008 data, rather than going to a separate column. This results in 2009 temperatures being compared with 2007 temperatures. E.g. the Jan 1 ChLT temp should be approx 0.5 F warmer than the previous year. It is listed as 0.25 F cooler. Treat the numbers with caution until they get straightened out.
A Happy New Year to them too, and a thank you for their measured real data, without which real science can’t happen.
Pardon if someone has already posted this: ‘El Nino’ apellation was given to the warm phase phenomenon because of the usual Christmas arrival.
Anna:
“The ice has been retreating around Greenland. Study carefully the anomaly map
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-081228.gif
Seems to me geothermal is fairly probable. How on earth are temperatures 3 and 4 degrees up when waters leading up to there are much cooler?”
Don’t you think if geothermal was that obvious to detect that there would be red ink all over Indonesia?
Hi Anna,
it’s an interesting theory but i don’t think there is any physical evidence for it, we would expect a lot of seismic activity if the amounts of magma required to cause even a small change in surface temperatures were being produced. This is not happening as you can see here. http://www.iris.edu/seismon/zoom/?view=eveday&lon=-26&lat=66
Good to see a bit of thinking outside the box though 🙂
Mary Hinge (13:39:51) :
“it’s an interesting theory but i don’t think there is any physical evidence for it, we would expect a lot of seismic activity if the amounts of magma required to cause even a small change in surface temperatures were being produced. This is not happening as you can see here. http://www.iris.edu/seismon/zoom/?view=eveday&lon=-26&lat=66
Good to see a bit of thinking outside the box though :-)”
Anna seemed to be wondering about geothermal, which is not necessarily detectable seismically. Smokers are an example. Although her map does raise the eyebrows in relation to temp anamolies vs areas of geothermal activity, my first reaction was to realize that geothermal is deep under ocean, and with ocean currents would not show up directly over geothermal areas, nor would a small amount of heated water relative to the huge volume of ocean allow such a direct observation at the surface.
However, there are ocean currents, some quite narrow and affected by several factors, that could be affected by the thousands of underwater geothermal sites, increases or decreases of which it seems to me might just affect greater ocean circulation patterns to some degree.
The newest ocean-temp-depth maps show that very cold water (as much as -6.0C below normal) is being cycled up to the surface now.
This signals a very big La Nina event is going to occur and it will develop very rapidly now.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/sstxz.gif
That was my point, to produce any changes to SST would require huge areas of continually ejected magma. There is no sign of this happening.
Tim Clark (12:06:38) :
J Berry (07:38:02) :
What does this predict for the midwest growing season?
Hi Tim,
late start, pretty wet.
Best of luck.
Mary Hinge (02:29:29) :
“Glenn (16:21:44) :
…..my first reaction was to realize that geothermal is deep under ocean, and with ocean currents would not show up directly over geothermal areas, nor would a small amount of heated water relative to the huge volume of ocean allow such a direct observation at the surface.
That was my point, to produce any changes to SST would require huge areas of continually ejected magma. There is no sign of this happening.”
Yes, but my point was that any changes would not show up *immediately above* geothermal activity, or at least not always. There may be changes to SST “downstream” so to speak, that is not recognized as having been caused by undersea geothermal, either directly or indirectly. Again, there are many “rivers” or currents surface and subsurface, and heat affects seawater salinity, etc. Could a (small compared to total ocean volume) heating of deep ocean current affect the regional current pattern?
These patterns *do* change, they seem quite complex in the Arctic, do we have the why of that down pat?
Mary Hinge
If you look at an animation of sea surface temperatures, there are certain areas where there are rapid changes between much colder than average and much warmer than average ocean areas.
The Gulf Stream, the area between Greenland and North America, between Greenland and Iceland, Iceland to north of Norway, the south Atlantic near South America, the south Atlantic around South Africa.
These are the areas where the most active ocean currents are occuring, the areas where the Thermohaline Ocean Circulation (the ocean deep ocean circulation system) are the most active. If you watch animations that last long enough, you’ll see there are actually areas where the ocean surface circulates in a circle where cold water and warm water rotate around each other in a Gyre.
The area between Iceland and Greenland is one of these and lately, there has just been more warm water than average being circulated into the Iceland-Greenland deep ocean circulation node.
It will go back to colder than normal in a no time at all (before it goes back to warmer than normal a little later etc. etc.)