ENSO Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies: 2015-2016

  • Released Wednesday, September 23, 2015
  • Updated Thursday, March 24, 2016 at 1:43PM
  • ID: 30645

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a quasi-periodic fluctuation of ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. The temperatures generally fluctuate between two states: warmer than normal central and eastern equatorial Pacific (El Niño) and cooler than normal central and eastern equatorial Pacific (La Niña).

This animation illustrates the evolution of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (relative to the respective normal state) in the Pacific Ocean associated with the developing 2015 El Niño, the warm phase ENSO. SST anomalies reflect the heat content in the mixed layer (upper 50 meters).


Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory


Datasets used in this visualization

InSitu and NOAA 16, 17, 18, 11, 7, 9, 14 GHRSST Level 4 AVHRR_OI Global Blended Sea Surface Temperature Analysis (Collected with the InSitu and AVHRR-3 and AVHRR-2 sensor)
Analysis

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.



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