Monthly Sea-Surface Temperature Anomalies

  • Released Thursday, October 24, 2013
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Sea-surface temperature is the temperature of the top millimeter of the ocean's surface. An anomaly is when something is different from normal, or average. A sea-surface temperature anomaly is how different the ocean temperature at a particular location at a particular time is from the normal temperatures for that place. Sea surface temperature anomalies can happen as part of normal ocean cycles or they can be a sign of long-term climate change, such as global warming. These maps show monthly sea-surface temperature anomalies from June 2002 to September 2011, as derived from Aqua’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) data. AMSR-E ended data collection in October 2011 due to problems with the rotation of its antenna.

Monthly Aqua/AMSR-E sea-surface temperature anomaly, 2002-2011.

For More Information

See neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Search.html?datasetId=AMSRE_SSTAn_M

Credits

Based on images by Jesse Allen, NASA's Earth Observatory, using Sea Surface Temperature data from the Advanced Microwave Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E), courtesy Remote Sensing Systems.

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This page was originally published on Thursday, October 24, 2013.
This page was last updated on Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 11:31 PM EST.