Steve Goddard writes:
Below are animations for the entire year (150 days) so far, based on NOAA SST maps. The videos are presented with minimal commentary. As they say, “150 pictures are worth 150,000 words.”
El Niño has faded and may be switching genders.
The Northern Pacific has been generally below average.
The tropical Atlantic has warmed significantly over the year, heading in to the hurricane season.
The ocean just south of Greenland has been persistently above average temperatures.
Antarctic waters have been getting colder, which is reflected in the growth of ice.
Arctic waters have been warm on the Atlantic side, and cold on the Pacific side. This is reflected in excess ice near Alaska and deficiencies near Greenland and Svalbard.
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Q: If the El Nino is fading, or changing sex, how long will it take for the residual heat on the Atlantic side to dissipate—or is it affected by a separate mechanism?
Thanks for the excellent animations of SST. It will be interesting to see what the effect of the changes will do regarding the amount of sea ice at the end of the current melt season. Crystal ball time again!
The most significant to me is the ‘switching genders’ El Nino to (possible) La Nina. Canada will feel it!
Also the warm waters west of Africa which could bring severe hurricanes to the USA.
Thank you for these animations. They really do tell a story.
And BTW, a note to global warmers: none of these temperature seen in the videos are controlled by co2. There is a far bigger picture involved!
The southern atlantic warm waters can be explained as they come out from the The La Plata river, while those hot areas in northern atlantic look like a different phenomenom. Perhaps due to changes in GMF:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AT-GMF.gif
and/or perhaps tectonic activity of the atlantic ridge (Iceland volcano).
Interesting times are just beginning. (“progressively” ☺)
Recent earthquake activity:
M 6.3 , northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 10:09:06 UTC
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 08:09:06 AM at epicenter
Depth: 10.00 km (6.21 mi)
OT: These two, one pixel each, SSN=40?
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.jpg
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/05/foia-suit-seeks-nasas-global-warming-data-.html
May 27, 2010
FOIA Suit Seeks NASA’s Global Warming Data
NASA has been slapped with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit alleging that the agency has tried to cover up mistakes in data that have been widely used to support claims of global warming.
In an 18-page complaint filed this morning in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Competitive Enterprise Institute says that, in 2007 and 2008, it submitted, but not yet received adequate responses to, FOIA requests seeking NASA documents and information related to changes made to NASA’s temperature data in response to questions raised…
Some great visuals Steve!
Since ocean currents are generally laminar in nature, most upward thermal movement is via conduction and it is rather weak, but if there is a non-thermocline temperature differential, it will flow. Being about 0.58 W/K/m in sea water when you differentiate across hundred of meters is slow and persistent movement of heat upward in the oceans as cooling occurs, initially keeping the surface warmer than without this flow. I feel that is what has been occurring since about 2005 or so, it’s just finally petering out (equalizing for the academia).
What do you think Steve? See that scenario happening, or more properly, have recently happened?
Amino Acids in Meteorites says: “…And BTW, a note to global warmers: none of these temperature seen in the videos are controlled by co2. There is a far bigger picture involved!”
The thermal mass of the oceans is about 1200 times that of the atmosphere. Big dog, small tail. No wonder Jones got his trivial surface temperature homework eaten!
Enneagram says: “…These two, one pixel each, SSN=40?
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.jpg”
They’ve been homogenized, corrected for TOB, adjusted, and had “appropriate” fudge factors applied.
Enneagram says:
May 31, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Those are ‘Lost in Space’ sunmotes, or blinkers. Mere outposts in the vast sea of solar magnetic phenomena.
Those specks might as well be on Betelguese, lost in the crushing void of time & space.
Let them strain at the gnats… we know what they represent.
wayne,
I don’t know much about ocean circulation, though I would guess that the warm tropical waters in the Atlantic are an indication of low cloud cover.
So Amino Acids, when you say “Canada will feel it!”, what do you mean? We had a very warm winter in 2009/10, is the winter of 2010/11 going to be an especially cold one?
Regards, MalcolmR
Maybe skirt-length changes could help with the revelations:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/7788326/Mini-skirt-meteorology-used-to-predict-weather.html
Perhaps the MetOffice should incorporate such data in its weather/climate models
The London Times was once know as The Thunderer. Nowadays they manage to produce the following type of article, makes you proud to be British?
“Night-time temperatures could rise above 25C because of climate change”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7141432.ece
However there is one very interesting statement: –
” Cities can be up to 10C warmer at night than surrounding rural areas, partly because they absorb more heat from the sun but also because they generate more heat from vehicles, lighting, machines and air conditioning units. Even the metabolism of millions of city dwellers adds to the temperature.
Mark McCarthy, a climate scientist for the Met Office who led the research, said: “The impact of this waste heat on a global scale is very small, but it is hugely significant at the city scale, where it can have a big influence on urban climates.” ”
Mark McCarthy and Ms Vicky Pope of The Met Office resurrect the Urban Heat Island?
There used to be a TV program for kids called “The Big Blue Marble” about topics related to our planet. There is a very good reason why that title was entirely apt. An abundance of water is and always has been the defining characteristic of our planet. Although the Nobel committee has seen fit to bestow a prize on Algore and the goofs at the IPCC for their propaganda efforts in the area of climate science, a really deserved prize awaits some scientist or group, who at some point in what appears to be an increasingly distant future, can step forward and convincingly state that they have arrived at a new theory that completely explains and accounts for the role of H2O in our climate.
That moment looks more distant than ever because our current climate establishment has invested decades of time and billions of dollars in studying CO2. It is as if A. Einstein, back in his patent clerk days, had decided the most productive way to expand on Newton’s work on gravity would be to spend thirty years studying apples.
Sean Peake asked: If the El Nino is fading, or changing sex, how long will it take for the residual heat on the Atlantic side to dissipate—or is it affected by a separate mechanism?”
The North Atlantic is impacted strongly by multiple natural variables. ENSO events cause changes in global atmospheric circulation patterns which raise and lower temperatures remote to the tropical Pacific. The lag in the North Atlantic (as a whole, not the lower latitudes that warmed during this El Nino) is three to six months.
ENSO events play on top of a longer-term natural variation called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or AMO, which has a frequency of 50 to 80 years. And then there are the sea level pressure variations, the North Atlantic Oscillation, etc.
But that patch of warm water in the lower latitides of the North Atlantic has dropped in temperature over the past month or so, so it’s already peaked.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=solar-minimum-forecasting
Haven’t you guys been talking about this for a LONG time now?
Keep up the good work. Always a daily read for me.
stevengoddard says:
May 31, 2010 at 3:29 pm
I don’t know much about ocean circulation, though I would guess that the warm tropical waters in the Atlantic are an indication of low cloud cover.
—
I see what you are saying, but that’s more on a year to year variance scale. I was more referring to a decadal scale, at the 10 to 20 or even 30 year rolls in the surface temperatures. Whether it’s albedo variances or (horror!) TSI variances over long periods, that’s another subject on the cause.
Does heat flex in and out of the oceans over decades, not one or two years? The long term view seems to indicate yes. I was just saying that heat flow would be slow and limited by it’s ability to move, the difference in K from one meter layer to the next would be very tiny so the flow would be slow but persistant, over many years as long as the overall temperature gradiance remains pointing up or down. I’m saying we have been on a down now for about five-six years. You just don’t see any massive movement in temperature overall because the oceans are buffering it and slowing it.
I read somewhere that within the past week the N. Atlantic temperature has headed down.
For your information:
Off-topic but very interesting;
[snip – Yes, waaaayyyyyy off topic, and so far OT that not even minimally relevant here. -A]
Nice animations, but, they could use a running date or timeline.
I’ve been looking at the dire predictions for hurricanes this season, and, it certainly is starting out like 2005 if you look at sea surface temperatures and the dying of el nino. But if the mid-troposphere is really warming as the AGW crowd has been screeching all winter, doesn’t this diminish the driving force for hurricane formation? Or, perhaps it’s cooling over the tropics where the water is warm? I wanted to take a look at the vertical temperature gradients in 2005 & the beginning of 2010, but, I couldn’t find an appropriate map.
Van Grungy @ur momisugly 3:56 PM
Thanks for that link to the Sci Am article about the sun. That brings a lot of stuff together.
=========
Wayne at 3:29pm – The deep ocean is only a few degrees C, so there should always be a slow transfer of heat downwards rather than up, except at the Poles. But then, an unstirred cup of coffee cools at the surface first, so in that case the transfer is upwards. The large scale SST changes come from changes in the pattern of winds over many months, which alter the flow of various warm & cold surface currents in the ocean basins. That’s my understanding of the process, anyway.