Many persons visit the Unisys Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly webpage to check on the surface temperatures of the oceans. Some people prefer the webpage due to the color scaling, which has light blues extending into positive anomalies. Unfortunately, the scaling makes sea surface temperature anomalies appear cooler than they are.
Example: The sea surface temperature anomalies on the map for today, Figure 1, appear very cool in the extratropical portions of the North Atlantic (20N-65N, 100W-20E) and North Pacific (20N-65N, 100E-100W). Some parts are cool, no doubt about it, especially along the east coast of Asia and in the Bering Sea.
Figure 1
Note: Just in case you’re wondering if the recent volcanic eruption in the Aleutians caused the cooling in those portions of the North Pacific, we can look at the Unisys animation here and determine the cooling started before the May 13th eruption. Then again, we can’t say the volcanic aerosols haven’t contributed to the cooling since then.
But if we look at the weekly sea surface temperature anomaly data for the extratropical portions of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, we’ll see that the temperatures there are cool, but not abnormally so. See Figures 2 and 3.
Figure 2
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Figure 3
A few things do stand out, however, and we can see them easier if we look at the monthly data. Based on the linear trends, the extratropical North Pacific (Figure 4) hasn’t warmed since 1994, and in the North Atlantic (Figure 5), the extratropical sea surface temperatures have warmed very little since 1997, even with the spike in 2012.
Figure 4
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Figure 5
The sea surface temperatures of the tropical North Pacific (0-20N, 100E-100W), of course, haven’t warmed appreciably in over 31 years. See Figure 6. And yet we know that somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere that sea surface temperatures are warming. Unfortunately, it’s the tropical North Atlantic (0-20N, 20W-20E), Figure 7, the spawning ground of hurricanes.
Figure 6
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Figure 7
As a reminder, we discussed the sea surface temperatures of the hurricane breeding grounds recently here.
And as we’ve illustrated and discussed for more than four years, the ocean heat content records and satellite-era sea surface temperature data, indicate the oceans have warmed naturally. If the topic of the natural warming of the global oceans in new to you, refer to my illustrated essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” [42MB].
SOURCE
The Sea Surface Temperature anomaly data used in this post is available through the NOAA NOMADS website:
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh
or:
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?lite=
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For those who haven’t noticed:
The Unisys page also has the “new” version with yellow to red colors for all positive anomalies: http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_daily.php?plot=ssn&inv=0&t=cur
“light blues extending into positive anomalies”
This is a peeve of mine – why can’t we all use a standard
shades of yellow-to orange-to red for high anomalies,
white for no change
shades of cyan-to blue-to purple for low anomalies?
Bob
The peak summer North Pacific SST has dropped nearly 1 degree C since 2005. That is not significant?[fig 2]
Bob
The SST for the Northern Hemisphere has cooling trend for the last 10 years .http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2nh/last:120/plot/hadsst3nh/last:120/trend
The north Atlantic (fig 3, 5) looks like a “micro Holocene” complete with a Younger Dryas just preceeding. Fractal pattern and all that.
Not sure what baseline is being used by Unisys, but in all the various SST anomaly maps I’ve seen, the differing baselines make them look a little different in the degree of warmer or cooler.
Bob
There was a report on the BBC this morning that the Basking sharks we expect around our west coast-notably Cornwall-are absent so far this year as the waters are abnormally cool-1 or 2 degrees below normal.
Living right next to the ocean in the next county along-Devon-I can personally attest to that, In fact I haven’t swam here for around 6 years. The waters have got noticeably cooler.
tonyb
La Nina is strengthening a bit. Might enhance N Atlantic TS activity this yr if it continues.
Could the diagonal cold anomaly stripe across the North Atlantic represent a faltering North Atlantic drift / gulf stream?
Thanks again for a good presentation.
Meteo France is forecasting a ‘rotten summer’ in part due to the cold sea temperatures in the NE Atlantic. While their worst projections suggest it could equal the cold anomaly of 1816, (https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/a-year-without-a-summer/) it probably won’t be that cold, just not summer as we’ve gotten to know it in the last few warming decades.
Verity Jones says: “While their worst projections suggest it could equal the cold anomaly of 1816…”
And without a colossal volcano.
Brian D says: “Not sure what baseline is being used by Unisys, but in all the various SST anomaly maps I’ve seen, the differing baselines make them look a little different in the degree of warmer or cooler.”
I would assume Unisys is using the standard daily SST data from NOAA (as far as I know It’s the only daily SST data available), and it uses 1971-2000. There are other factors that impact the data on the maps. The NEDIS only uses nighttime satellite data and it seems to run warmer. See the discussion here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/a-note-about-sst-anomaly-maps/
Regards
phlogiston says: “Could the diagonal cold anomaly stripe across the North Atlantic represent a faltering North Atlantic drift / gulf stream?”
The cooling along the Gulf Stream has appeared regularly over the past couple of years, if memory serves. I haven’t looked into it. But maybe it’s in response to a seasonal shift in the NAO?
Bob, in figs 2 & 3 there is a pronounced annual peak in the years following 1995. As these are anomaly graphs, what causes these peaks?
beng says: “La Nina is strengthening a bit. Might enhance N Atlantic TS activity this yr if it continues.”
I’ve seen papers that present the cause of the reduction in hurricanes during El Ninos (increased wind shear) and the data they’ve presented to support it. But, as far as I know, they don’t suggest that La Ninas contribute to more–that is, it’s two phases: either El Nino (less hurricanes) or not El Nino (more hurricanes).
Bloke down the pub says: “Bob, in figs 2 & 3 there is a pronounced annual peak in the years following 1995. As these are anomaly graphs, what causes these peaks?”
Part of the additional seasonal cycle in the anomaly data after 1995 is caused by the base years NOAA uses for anomalies (1971-2000). If I were to shift the base years to the period of 1995 to 2012 for example, those seasonal variations would decrease then, but they’d then show up during the early part of the data. Is the difference in the seasonal cycles caused by the two large volcanos during the period of 1971-2000? Not sure, but they’d probably skew the normal seasonal cycles for a couple of years afterwards.
i’m with bloke down the pub fig 2 and 3 seem to still have the annual cycle. unless the cooling is seasonal
It needs to be kept in mind that we don’t have any long-term data on ocean temperatures. While the Navy did some work in the 1950s, the degree of error was one degree fahrenheit for sensors typical of the time, and there was no comprehensive measurement of oceanic temps.
The 1970s saw the first buoy network, and so we have about 40 years’ worth of temperature data. However, this is anything but comprehensive due to the number of buoys.
Bottom line: we don’t actually know what ocean temps have been. It’s like testing one car for miles per gallon and assuming that every car from their inception in the 1890s to now have the same mileage.
Ask the participants in a recent charity swim round Southwold pier how cold the North Sea is. From memory around 90 had to be rescued, and 2 taken to hospital with full blown hypothermia. It was a disaster, and a complete miscalculation by the organisers. They were lucky no one died.
There’s a NOAA SST anomaly image master homepage at
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/index.html
They take 2 images per week. The current year has all images listed, and there are links at the bottom, to previous years going back to 1996. References for future arguments about ENSO…
That is not an El Nino; *THIS* is an El Nino http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/1997/anomnight.12.30.1997.gif
That is not a La Nina; *THIS* is a La Nina
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2008/anomnight.1.10.2008.gif
Climate Weenie says:
May 28, 2013 at 7:31 am
“light blues extending into positive anomalies”
This is a peeve of mine – why can’t we all use a standard
shades of yellow-to orange-to red for high anomalies,
white for no change
shades of cyan-to blue-to purple for low anomalies?
..==..
Ye-es, but, goodness me, do I have a peeve: I would have one band every four or five in a severely contrasting colour:
dark blue
mid-dark blue
fawn
mid blue
quite light blue
very light blue
mid green
very light pink
palest violet
white
pale yellow
mid purple
light yellow
yellowy orange
orange
pale turquoise
deep orange
Barbie pink
light red
emerald
mid red
maroon
deep lavender
cream
navy blue
The contrasting colours allowing the eye to pick out the approximate point in the scale . . . .
Auto
Bob Tisdale,
You’re the perfect guy to pose this thought to.
I’ve been thinking that maybe the AMO/PDO and Arctic Ice extent are part of oscillator.
The water starts to warm, creates surface winds that reinforce the warming, but at some point the collection of warm (or opposite cold) water flips a “switch”, pumping the warm water to the poles to cool. In the Arctic there’s a lot of ice melting. At some point enough of the heat has been discharged, it turns off, to await the build up of heat in the ocean to trigger it again.
Where this cycle takes 70-80 years to run through.
The AMO and PDO are very clear in the data. The PDO went negative (cool) around 2005 and the AMO went positive (warm) around 1995. As Bob has shown the PDO is primarily an after effect of ENSO but using it as an index is still useful.
Bloke down the pub says:
May 28, 2013 at 10:15 am
Bob, in figs 2 & 3 there is a pronounced annual peak in the years following 1995. As these are anomaly graphs, what causes these peaks?
Decreasing aerosols.
Decreased aerosols = decreased aerosol seeded clouds = increased summer solar insolation + increased winter radiative cooling.
In the extratropical N Atlantic the increasing amplitude of the seasonal anomalies is exactly what you would expect to see from decreasing N American aerosol production.