Contrast in Pacific sea surface temperature from the 1997/8 El Nino
These images are of the sea surface temperature anomaly one year apart: 15 October 1997 on the left and 15 October 1998 on the right. Deep reds are 5 K warmer than usual for the time of year, and deep blues are 5 K cooler. During this time the Pacific moved from a strong El Nino phase to La Nina conditions, and the plots show the large effect of this on surface temperature distributions. In the right plot, westward propagating equatorial waves can be seen.
The underlying data are derived by thermal remote sensing, and are independent of (but highly consistent with) SST information obtained from ocean surface measurements. The remotely sensed SSTs come from analysing imagery of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer and Along Track Scanning Radiometer series of sensors. The remotely sensed SST have been spatio-temporally completed (in-filled) using optimal interpolation, before averaging from daily fields to the annual maps shown here. Full details of the data set are given in the paper linked below, and the full resolution (daily, 0.05 degree) data are freely available by registering at the UK Centre for Environmental Data Archival (see data link below). When using this image, please cite both the paper and dataset. This project is funded by the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative.
Merchant, C. J., Embury, O., Roberts-Jones, J., Fiedler, E., Bulgin, C. E., Corlett, G. K., Good, S., McLaren, A., Rayner, N., Morak-Bozzo, S. and Donlon, C. (2014), Sea surface temperature datasets for climate applications from Phase 1 of the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (SST CCI). Geoscience Data Journal. doi: 10.1002/gdj3.20
Merchant, C.J.; Embury, O.;Roberts-Jones, J.;Fiedler, E.;Bulgin, C.E.;Corlett, G.K.;Good, S.; McLaren, A.; Rayner, N. ; Donlon, C. ESA Sea Surface Temperature Climate Change Initiative (ESA SST CCI): Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) level 3 uncollated data (L3U) long-term product version 1.1. NERC Earth Observation Data Centre, 2014, 30th May 2014. Available from doi:10.5285/79229cee-71ab-48b6-b7d6-2fceccead938
