Your hot little secret is ???

[Ross]

Kindly explain this .

Whenever I look at this chart of sea surface temperature anomalies
there is always a bright yellow spot off the NE coast of USA/Canada .

It always seems to be there , why ?

Your hidden chain of volcanoes ?
Sewage outlet for the entire continent ?
Your dumped Nuclear waste ?
Whaaaaaaaaaaat ?

[Potemkin]

If you look on the scale it seems cooler to me.

[Ross]

As I read it , yellow is +3.0 Degrees above baseline value .

[Twoolf]

Originally Posted by Ross

As I read it , yellow is +3.0 Degrees above baseline value .

Concur.

[flourbug]

Having dipped my toes in the ocean in Maine, I can tell you that it is freezing even in August.

Ross, your picture clearly shows a supervolcano. Maine is mostly volcanic rock, but it has not had any activity since fish learned to crawl. I checked and NASA seems to be covering up your hot spot with icy cold sea water:



Here's their Sea Surface temp page (it is for the tropics but shows the north atlantic coast too) http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?3376

---------- Post added at 10:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:51 AM ----------

Heyyyy... wait a minute... the picture they claim "This is the most recent Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data available for the Gulf of Mexico region and the Atlantic Coast region." is from Dec 2008.

---------- Post added at 10:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:55 AM ----------

WeatherUnderground:

[Exodia]

I'm not an oceanographer, but I think the shape/depth of the sea floor in this region may hold some clues. Gulf stream runs SW to NE, and perhaps swirls a bit when it hits the ridge by the Sohm Plain??

[Ross]

Very clever . Thanks to all .

[linttrap]

Here's the SST Anomalies chart for today. Anomaly charts are not the same as sea surface temp charts.

SST Anomaly is produced by subtracting the long-term mean SST (for that location in that time of year) from the current value. A positive anomaly means that the current sea surface temperature is warmer than average, and a negative anomaly means it is cooler than average.



Current data can be found here, among other places:

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/a....5.24.2012.gif

[Kassy]

Originally Posted by Exodia

I'm not an oceanographer, but I think the shape/depth of the sea floor in this region may hold some clues. Gulf stream runs SW to NE, and perhaps swirls a bit when it hits the ridge by the Sohm Plain??

Circulation maps here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation

The link to topography doesn't explain the anomaly because it's like that every year.

My guess is that it's related to transport of excess heating from the tropics.

[Exodia]

Originally Posted by Kassy

Circulation maps here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation

The link to topography doesn't explain the anomaly because it's like that every year.

My guess is that it's related to transport of excess heating from the tropics.

Could a small anomaly in the tropics lead to a larger one where this "hot spot" is?

Also, this whole "anamoly" stuff is a bit fishy to me anyway. Most of what I have seen have been based on a time line of about 20 years. Less than a blink of the eye in earth processes.

[Kassy]

Yes i think so. Think of the Gulf Stream itself as a highway transporting heat.

Got distracted by the loops, last 6 months:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/sst/anom_anim.html

And back to the calculation:

3. Climatology

SUMMARY: Coral bleaching is caused by unusually warm sea surface temperatures. Therefore, the first step in looking for areas at risk for bleaching is to define the "usual" temperatures in the world's oceans. This is accomplished by calculating a long-term mean SST, or climatology. CRW monthly mean SST climatologies are calculated from 7 years of satellite data. The Maximum of the Monthly Mean SST climatology is then defined as the warmest monthly mean value for each pixel around the world, indicating the upper limit of "usual" temperature.. These climatologies are available as images and HDF data files on the CRW website.

And some more steps before they arrive at

SST_anomaly = SST - Daily_SST_climatology

It's a product but they use the general steps before focusing on corals:
http://digitalcorpora.org/corp/nps/f...01/601584.html

The SST anomaly field (degrees C) is the difference between the 50 km nighttime-only SST and the nighttime-only monthly mean SST climatology. The climatology is based on nighttime observations from 1984-1993, with SST observations from the years 1991 and 1992 omitted due to aerosol contamination from the eruption Mt. Pinatubo in June of 1991

http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst.html

So the last 19 years we have seen anomalies against the 1984-1993 background.

It would be cool to have a loop of the whole sequence to see if "Ross' Spot" moves up a bit or becomes brighter over time.

~ BTW cool Benjamin Franklin story on the Gulf Stream link.

[Ross]

As at May 24 , 2012


[COLOR="Silver"]

[Ross]

On this chart more hot lumps are appearing down the coast .




I am reasonably certain they are about to come ashore .




They do that when the average water temperature becomes too cold .

[Ross]

.

Ok now please explain that bright red spot in the Great Lakes area
of USA .


.

[Kassy]

I'm not sure the results for the lake from a SST instrument are as good. Much less data points available. This graph says Lake Michigan is 5 degrees warmer then in the baseline period.

You should look at it over time.

It might just look jittery, same happens to the Black Sea on time lapse videos.

[Ross]

I realize changes in ocean temperatures are not everybody's cup
of tea but it interests me and since I am investigating I may as well also post it .









A wind map for Feb 2002