From The Cliff Mass Weather Blog
By Cliff Mass
Perhaps, this blog spends too much time talking about the atmosphere, so to make amends today, let’s see what is happening to the temperature of the ocean surface. And see whether anything unusual is going on. Let’s start with yesterday’s sea surface temperatures around North America (below). Sorry, it is all in °C. Keep in mind that 10°C is roughly 50F, 20°C is around 68F, and 30°C is approximately 86F.
The eastern Pacific near the West Coast is cold (about 50F), with central California’s waters a bit cooler than ours. You must head to the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula to find the water warm enough for comfortable swimming.
The East Coast is a study in contrasts. The water off of New England is crazy cold (dropping below 7C), while the uber-warm Gulf Stream is found along the west coast of Florida, moves past the Carolinas, and then heads northeastward into the Atlantic.
There is a HUGE temperate contrast between the Gulf Stream current and the cold water of the Northeast. A blow-up of the sea surface temperatures off the Northwest really shows the amazing horizontal temperature changes north of the Gulf Stream
Look closely and you will waves in the interface between warm and cold water in the Atlantic and a fascinating loop in the warm water over the Gulf of Mexico (first image above). Very warm water over the Caribbean and west of Central America
Your next question is probably: is the current pattern of sea surface temperature unusual?
To evaluate this, the next map shows the difference between yesterday’s sea surface temperature and normal conditions (also called the SST anomaly).
Pretty close to normal off the Northwest coast. A few degrees colder than normal for California’s coastal waters. And near normal on Mexico’s west coast. Most of the Gulf and Atlantic coast is slightly above normal. Temperature is cooler than normal north of the Gulf Stream, which suggests that the Gulf Stream is south of its normal position by a hundred miles or so.
The biggest sea surface temperature story is what is happening in the tropical Pacific. Last year, a strong El Nino brought MUCH warmer than normal sea surface temperatures from South America, westward into the central Pacific.
But something major has happened. The tropical Pacific surface waters are rapidly cooling, resulting in cooler than normal waters in many locations (see map, with arrows showing you some of the coolest spots).
El Nino is dead. Long live La Nina, its frigid cousin!
