PRELIMINARY February 2010 SST Anomaly Update

I’ve moved to WordPress.  This post can now be found at PRELIMINARY February 2010 SST Anomaly Update

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Sorry for the delay. These preliminary monthly SST anomaly updates usually come out on Mondays. But the NOMADS3 server has been down, and I waited until today to contact NOAA. They were kind enough to direct me to another server. Thanks, Diane.

The February 2010 SST data through the NOAA NOMADS website won’t be official until February 8th. Refer to the schedule on the NOAA Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature Analysis Frequently Asked Questions webpage. But NOMADS as usual has produced preliminary values. The following are the preliminary Global and NINO3.4 SST anomalies for February 2010. I’ve also included the official weekly data through February 24, 2010.

Monthly NINO3.4 SST anomalies are continuing their decline. They’ve dropped ~0.33 deg C over the past month.

http://i49.tinypic.com/xm1zbk.png
Monthly NINO3.4 SST Anomalies
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Monthly Global SST anomalies have dropped 0.014 deg C since January.
http://i47.tinypic.com/9sgfat.png
Monthly Global SST Anomalies
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The weekly NINO3.4 SST anomaly data, with the most recent value centered on February 24, 2010, shows it has slowed its decline for the past few weeks.
http://i47.tinypic.com/4qkfih.png
Weekly NINO3.4 SST Anomalies

The NINO3.4 SST anomalies may linger near the present levels, not drop appreciably, for a few more weeks. There’s another Kelvin wave working its way east. Refer to the following gif animation of the Equatorial Pacific Subsurface temperature anomalies from the CPC. Link to source:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/wkxzteq.shtml

http://i46.tinypic.com/2nt8ao9.gif
Animation of the Equatorial Pacific Subsurface Temperature Anomalies
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Weekly Global SST Anomalies are still elevated and have recently taken a minor upward swing again, though it’s difficult to see in the graph.
http://i45.tinypic.com/f41lir.png
Weekly Global SST Anomalies

SOURCE

SST anomaly data is available through the NOAA NOMADS website:
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh