1/1
Seasonality of global ocean temperatures
Version 2 2019-10-22, 10:57
Version 1 2019-10-22, 10:54
figure
posted on 2019-10-22, 10:57 authored by Christopher J MerchantChristopher J MerchantThis animated GIF shows the seasonal variation of global sea surface temperature on a five-day step through the course of a typical year. At any give place, the typical value for a given day of the year is shown minus the annual average for that place. The figure was generated from the the dataset described in this paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-019-0236-x and is derived from trillions of satellite observations.
This is based on a climatology of the years 1982 - 2010 inclusive -- i.e., the annual cycle is averaged over the period 1982 - 2010 as is the annual average. The period used is as close as possible to the standard climatological period of 1981 to 2010 with this dataset, which starts during 1981: the climatology is based only on complete observational years. The animation loops over every fifth day of the climatological year, starting with 5th January. The large scale variation around the year is driven by the difference in heating of the ocean by the Sun between winter and summer. While there is clearly a variation with latitude, the GIF also illustrates how seasonal variations at a given latitude vary with longitude across ocean basins.
The static GIF shows the typical seasonality on 31 December.
