Mid-August 2012 Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly Update

The weekly Reynolds OI.v2 sea surface temperature data on the NOAA NOMADS website is normally updated about 7:00 to 7:30AM (NDT) on Monday mornings.  The update was very slow last week, and so far they haven’t updated the data for this week.  The keeper of the Reynolds data is likely on holiday.  As soon as it’s updated for the week centered on August 15^th, I’ll publish a mid-month update.

Regards

HERE’S THE UPDATE

I’ll make this a sticky post until the preliminary August 2012 update. Hopefully, NOAA will resume its normal Monday morning updates of the Reynolds OI.v2 sea surface temperature data next week.

In addition to the typical mid-month look at weekly data, this update compares the evolution of the 2012/13 El Niño to earlier El Niño events, where NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies began the year in La Niña conditions. That, of course, assumes this El Niño lasts through 2013, and I don’t see any reason why it would not. But first…

I’m done with the first draft of Who Turned on the Heat? The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño-Southern Oscillation. I’ve been proofreading and cleaning up some of the cartoon-like drawings of the ENSO process since last weekend. I added a new chapter yesterday, based on some comments I’ve received from a new AGW proponent website. I’m now hoping to publish Who Turned on the Heat? first, at a discounted price in pdf form, early in September. A week or two later I’ll publish the Amazon Kindle edition at its then standard price, and raise the pdf price accordingly. It includes more than 370 illustrations, which makes it a large pdf document, well in excess of 20MB.

MID-MONTH UPDATE

Weekly NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies for the week centered on August 15, 2012 are approximately +0.68 deg C, having dropped from almost +1.0 deg C since last week.

Weekly NINO3.4

Global sea surface temperature anomalies are continuing their fluctuating upward march, rebounding from La Niña conditions and responding to the evolving El Niño. It will be interesting to see if they reach 2009/10 levels.

Weekly Global

COMPARISON OF THE EVOLUTIONS OF EL NIÑO EVENTS

The next graph compares the evolution of the El Niño events (from the beginningof this dataset in November 1981) that started from La Niña conditions. This year’s NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies are back to tracking along at the pace of the most recent El Niño, the one that occurred in 2009/10.

NINO3.4 Evolution

The evolution of NINO1+2 sea surface temperature anomalies for the same El Niño events are shown in the last graph. The NINO1+2 region is in the eastern tropical Pacific, just south of the equator. The coordinates are 10S-0, 90W-80W. This year the NINO1+2 sea surface temperature anomalies warmed early, leading some to believe this would become an East Pacific El Niño, but they have cooled considerably. NINO1+2 sea surface temperature anomalies are just about zero deg C this week.

NINO1+2 Evolution

SOURCE

The Reynolds Optimally Interpolated Sea Surface Temperature Data (OISST) are available through the NOAA National Operational Model Archive & Distribution System (NOMADS).

http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh