Indecisive El Nino

  • Credit

    NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Indecisive El Nino Exhibits 'Split Personality'

The Central equatorial Pacific Ocean warmed by about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) between June and August 2004, which can indicate development of a weak to moderate El Nino. Yet in other locations, important signals have been absent, suggesting the climate pattern may be of two minds. NASA satellites show warm water anomalies concentrated in the central Pacific Ocean in August. By September the anomalies are weaker. The SeaWinds instrument on NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite has shown stronger than normal trade winds for this time of year on the eastern side of the Pacific basin. Since the 1997 to 1998 El Nino, these trade winds have exhibited a kind of 'split personality' condition during times when the Central equatorial Pacific warmed.

Sea surface temperature anomaly for 2004 Aug 5

Metadata

  • Sensor

    Aqua/AMSR-E

  • Animation ID

    3043

  • Video ID

    NONE

  • Start Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • End Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • Animator

    Greg Shirah, Jesse Allen

  • Studio

    SVS

  • Visualization Date

    2004/10/07

  • Scientist

    David Adamec (NASA/GSFC)

  • Datasets

    Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly

  • Data Date

    2004/06/01 - 2004/10/03

  • Animation Type

    Regular