Where is it hot?

As interesting as land temperatures, there is something going on in the Pacific between, Alaska, Hawaii and Oregon:
Unisys Weather - Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly - Current

This may be a normal pattern as I'm not in the habit of watching sea surface temperatures but gosh, what an interesting artifact.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob,

I used to follow SST anomalies routinely before retiring in 2012. I still look at them occasionally.

It's my experience that these SST "hot spots" generally do not persist in any one location for an extended period of time. I recall that there was a strong positive SST anomaly off the NE CONUS coast just before hurricane/extra-tropical storm "Sandy" hit the populated areas of NJ/NY. That likely contributed to the strength of the storm.

 

Is there a good online reference or papers describing the mechanism? Salinity, temperature, current, minimum cloud cover during the day with fog or cloud cover at night, . . . a mix?

The size of this anomaly has me curious.

The reason I ask is we've had a number of recent papers discussing thermal warming of the lower ocean layers. But here is what appears to be a thermal bloom. I'm wondering if this may make a significant, local to area change in the ocean thermocline.

Typical durations?

I had been following the Gulf surface temperatures during hurricane season as these often give a clue as to whether something bad is about to happen. But I had assumed they were solar and current related. Now I'm curious.

Bob Wilson

 

I dont have a link but Bob Tisdale did a report about SST being normal along the path of Sandy.
Ill find it later.

 

IIRC, SSTs were normal over most of the track of that hurricane. The SST anomalies were positive just off the New England coast, so for the last few hours off-shore, the storm was in positive anomaly SSTs. That's what I recall, could be wrong...

 

An Inconvenient Truth: Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies along Sandy’s Track Haven’t Warmed in 70+ Years | Watts Up With That?

 

Not that I'm aware of. I started following SST anomalies when I was a forecaster at Brownsville, TX (BRO), in the 1990s. That station was close enough to the Gulf of Mexico to influence the wx in the BRO forecast area.

I've used the NOAA SST anomaly site at Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies | Teleconnections | National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).

Haven't really noticed. Maybe on the order of weeks to months?