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Extreme
Eastern Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Spike Looking A Lot Like El
Nino
(Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly on June 19, 2014. Note the blossom of red and orange off the western coast of South and Central America. That’s very hot water in the Eastern Pacific. Image source: NOAA/ESRL)
20 June, 2014
The
global weather altering event that is El Nino again took a step
forward this week as temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific continued
to rise, today
hitting values of +0.78 C above the 1979 to 2000 average.
An impressive climb adding to already warm readings which, since late
May, have ranged between +0.6 and +0.68 C. It’s a strong rise that
continues to show progress toward El Nino, increasing
ocean-to-atmosphere heat transfer, and raising the likelihood that
2014 may break the all-time global high temperature records last set
in 2010.
NASA
Shows May Heat Record Shattered, Japan Meteorological Agency Records
Hottest Spring
Already,
even as the monster that is El Nino combined with human warming still
struggled to emerge from Pacific waters, spring of 2014 set new
global atmospheric heat records.According
to NASA, this May was the hottest in the global measure,
meanwhile, the Japanese Meteorological Agency marked the March-April
period as the hottest spring in all of the past 130 years (NASA
showed the same period was second hottest). Rising Pacific Ocean
surface temperatures by themselves were enough, when combined with
raging human greenhouse gas heat forcing, to nudge atmospheric
temperatures into a new record range. But the emergence of full-blown
El Nino will likely push current record readings even higher.
Wedge
of Very Hot Water Stretching Out From South America
Now
by mid-to-late June, a hot wedge of very warm water is flooding out
from South America covering a large swath of ocean from the Ecuador
coast and stretching all the way into the Central Pacific.
Temperatures in this broad zone range from an impressively hot +1 C
to an extraordinary +3 to +4 C in hot pools just off shore. This
makes the Eastern Pacific a zone of hot water that now rivals and
likely exceeds the extreme temperature departures in regions of
anomalous warm water off the Pacific Northwest Coast and in the North
Atlantic. A well of heat energy that is likely already extending an
influence into global weather patterns, as
seen in the continued delay and disruption of the Indian Monsoon over
the past week
(Very hot pool of water off Ecuador showing sea surface temperature anomalies in the extraordinarily hot +2.25 to +4 C range with smaller pools of +4 C and hotter water visible in this NOAA/NWS graphic.)
During
March, sub-sea temperature anomalies spiked to +5 to +6 C above
average in the hottest zones. So it appears, now, that some of these
sub-sea anomalies are hitting the surface, clogging up the Pacific’s
ability to soak up atmospheric heat and allowing that heat to
accumulate.
Trades
Picked Up, Then Stalled Again
Last
week, atmospheric feedback promoting El Nino had appeared to weaken.
The east-to-west trade winds had picked up and few countervailing
west winds running from Asia toward the Americas were observed. But
by this week, the trades had again faded with west winds seen north
of the Solomons, east of the Phillippines, and along a broad zone in
the Eastern Pacific. A re-emergence of an atmospheric feedback
necessary for El Nino’s continued development.
Overall,
ongoing warming in the Eastern Pacific along with a renewed weakening
of the trades shows devolopment toward the predicted El Nino and an
ongoing enhanced likelihood that past global high temperature records
will continue to fall during 2014.
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