Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures and Anomalies

[Ivanhater]

June 26th-July 3rd. Its gonna be a hot summer for the southeast and Gulf.

[StormClouds63]

I know water temperature is only one ingredient, but yesterday a reading of 87 degrees in the northwest Gulf was reported by a station out of Beaumont. That seems more like an August reading, rather than June. I do recall the final week of August, 2005, the temperatures in the northwest Gulf reached as high as 91 degrees. That might have been a record, though I can't verify.

[Macrocane]

Impressive, almost 32°C in Louisiana coast. I'm also impressed by the cool waters in the Yucatan Peninsula, does anyone know why it hasn't warmed yet?

[somethingfunny]

I had heard on the news a few weeks ago that the Loop Current had pinched off an eddy, they mentioned it as a reason why the oil hadn't spread towards the Keys like we had feared. I have no idea how that would affect SSTs though.

[bob rulz]

Using the Hurricane Severity Index (which evenly divides a storm's impact between intensity and size), the strongest storms to make landfall in the U.S. were Carla, Hugo, and Betsy, with Camille, Katrina, and Opal just behind. Interesting that 5 of the 6 were Gulf hurricanes.

The larger storms are almost always the ones that do the most damage, although of course the amount of advance warning and location of impact are ultimately the most important factors.

Here's more details on the Hurricane Severity Index.
http://katrina.impactweather.com/hsi/hsi.pdf
http://www.impactweather.com/HSI.pdf

Slide 15 (first link above) provides rankings of infamous storms based on intensity and size. One thing I found interesting on slide 15 ... they have Andrew's intensity value at 23, while Camille is a 22. If Andrew came into south Florida with highest sustained winds of 165 m.p.h., can we then assume that they're estimating Camille's winds somewhere around 155-160 m.p.h. at Mississippi landfall?

Thanks for the links - I'm hoping that eventually the HSI or at least something similar will officially be used alongside the Saffir-Simpson scale sometime in the near-future.

And yeah that is interesting about Camille/Andrew.

The Northern Gulf is breaking some records. Some of the highest values in the entire basin!

Wow, it looks like that oil has really heated things up in the northern Gulf. I'm sure we're all hoping that we get lucky in the Gulf this year, but conditions are just too perfect.

I had heard on the news a few weeks ago that the Loop Current had pinched off an eddy, they mentioned it as a reason why the oil hadn't spread towards the Keys like we had feared. I have no idea how that would affect SSTs though.

I'm not really an expert on this so perhaps somebody else can clarify, but wouldn't this spread warmer temperatures across the Gulf but keep the Loop Current from expanding further south and therefore keep the southern Gulf a bit cooler than it otherwise would be?

[somethingfunny]

Wow, it looks like that oil has really heated things up in the northern Gulf. I'm sure we're all hoping that we get lucky in the Gulf this year, but conditions are just too perfect.

Could it be a false reading? Maybe the oil slick is reflecting sunlight the same way a thermometer set up above pavement reads falsely warm, but the oceanic heat content wouldn't actually be any warmer.... The Northern Gulf is usually quite a bit cooler than the rest of the Gulf so I don't think it's a coincidence we're seeing these abnormally warm readings at the same time that there's a giant oil spill.

[bob rulz]

Wow, it looks like that oil has really heated things up in the northern Gulf. I'm sure we're all hoping that we get lucky in the Gulf this year, but conditions are just too perfect.

Could it be a false reading? Maybe the oil slick is reflecting sunlight the same way a thermometer set up above pavement reads falsely warm, but the oceanic heat content wouldn't actually be any warmer.... The Northern Gulf is usually quite a bit cooler than the rest of the Gulf so I don't think it's a coincidence we're seeing these abnormally warm readings at the same time that there's a giant oil spill.

From what I've read, the oil coating the surface does actually make the water warmer. I'm not sure how the oil itself would actually affect the hurricane's intensity though and nobody really is sure. More than likely it would just be a minor annoyance to a very large hurricane, although a smaller hurricane could be adversely affected in some way.

[gatorcane]

Waters around the FL peninsula are running above normal. Check out the the waters off the SE Coast of FL around the Bahamas flats. Those are SSTs 90F+ where you see the large area of deep red shading. Also in the Gulf stream, there are some high 80s showing up. Taking a look at the anomalies, the Northern Gulf and these SSTs in the Bahamas flats are the warmest SSTs in the basin at the moment. I checked back to compare with 2005 and the GOM and waters off of FL/Bahamas were actually running cooler than now if you can believe that. Overall it looks like SSTs anomalies this year are surpassing 2005 still.

With SSTs like this it is only a matter of time before it could get quite active in the Atlantic, as soon as the shear lets up some. I suspect it may get so active at times, there could be multiple systems we are tracking at the same time in the Atlantic.

[jasons2k]

I'm also impressed by the cool waters in the Yucatan Peninsula, does anyone know why it hasn't warmed yet?

I don't know the explanation, but I see it there each and every year. It's nothing new.

[Ivanhater]

GOM anomalies..insane

[img][/img]

31 Celsius along the north central gulf coast

[Ivanhater]

What a difference 1 month makes and its only June

May 20th



June 20th

[Scorpion]

Geesh, at this rate it will be boiling come August

[ROCK]

Ivan this does not bode well for us Gulf coasters thats for sure. The sst's are hotter now than 2005 and only going to get hotter as we progress through summer.

[RL3AO]

Remember when everyone was saying how the GOM was really cold and its a good sign for the hurricane season? So....yeah...

[Macrocane]

A little off topic, but look at the region west of Central America in the EPAC, it has cooled in the last month and maybe it will continue cooling so it's possible that the EPAC season won't be as active as it has been in the last days.

[Ivanhater]

Ivan this does not bode well for us Gulf coasters thats for sure. The sst's are hotter now than 2005 and only going to get hotter as we progress through summer.

I know..not liking the 00z euro

[JPmia]

What a difference 1 month makes and its only June

May 20th



June 20th

It looks as if the entire Gulf is one big loop current in terms of SSTs. Also, water temps in the Florida Straits and the Bahamas are just as high. Those temps won't be good for the health of the coral reefs in those areas.

[accuweather]

On a side note, Buoy 42040 has recorded it's highest June SST in its recorded history 33.8C. It is the second highest SST is has ever recorded in any June or July. It once recorded 33.9 in August. The previous record was 33.6C. I suspect the next hourly reading will be its first time over 34C.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/data/climatic/42040.txt

Oh yeah....this is due South of Mobile..covered in oil...thanks BP!!

Very interesting, thanks for pointing this out. I quizzed NDBC about this; this is what they said:

"The buoy water temperatures in the Gulf are above normal values, But we don't believe it is related to the presence of oil. They are in line with NCEP SST anomaly analyses* which are about 1 to 2 deg C higher than normal over most of the Gulf and even higher in the North Central Gulf."

"The large diurnal differences we have seen recently are a result of daytime heating of the buoy and likely do not reflect the actual water temperature during the hottest part of the day. The thermistor that reports water temperature is actually mounted on the interior of the buoy on the bottom of the hull, so it is actually measuring the temperature of the buoy hull and not the water directly. Most of the time this is not a problem, but during the summer, when sun angles are high and winds are light, reported temperatures can be much higher than the actual water temperatures. 42040 is now a 10-meter buoy, and we believe the 10-meters are affected more by this than the standard 3-meter buoys."

*They provided this URL which is similar to the others folks have uploaded:
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/col ... _ophi0.png

In response to this:

temp did not register for the last hour...I think 35.5 may have been the max temp possible...

They went on to say:

"We have reduced the upper limits for release of water temperature for the Gulf buoys to 32.5 deg C to avoid the release of questionable water temperature data. We think the nighttime temperatures are more in line with the actual water temperatures."

I also asked them if they thought the oil could interfere with the sensors and what their plan was to deal with that. They said:

"There is currently nothing that we can do to protect the buoys from the oil slick, but we do not anticipate that the oil will affect the buoys in the path of the oil."

[Ptarmigan]

Disclaimer: This is Ptarmigan's prediction. The posts in this forum are NOT official forecast and should not be used as such. They are just the opinion of the poster and may or may not be backed by sound meteorological data. They are NOT endorsed by any professional institution or storm2k.org. For official information, please refer to the NHC and NWS products.

Something tells me that 93L will develop into Alex soon.

[Patrick99]

Waters off S. Florida are not far behind.....we're not getting ANY rain, the local waters are just boiling under high sun all day long. I'm not surprised at some 90 degree readings on or near the flats.