Of all the different weather maps we look at, the one that should be getting the most attention these days is the one showing sea surface temperature anomalies. Sea surfaces are not supposed to warm faster than continental land, but that is precisely what we see happening for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole in this year’s late summer:
Scientists have not yet given us a good explanation for this phenomenon. As a matter of fact, today’s Carbon Brief website features a guest post, written by a British climate scientist, having the title, “Why does land warm up faster than the oceans?” It is well worth reading because he introduces a number of theories and concepts that go beyond the traditional explanations and make good sense. There is also an up-to-date interactive chart of the trends since 1880. https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-does-land-warm-up-faster-than-the-oceans. Something has to be missing from the story. One thing he does not talk about is any potential for development of rapid temperature stratification, where heat that is collected at the surface does not immediately get transported to lower levels. Subduction normally occurs by any of several different activities like tides, currents, eddies and gyres that are almost always present in large bodies of water, but change cannot be ruled out. It is also true that the north has many bodies of water that are relatively shallow or landlocked, far more than the south does, allowing heat to build up more easily in a long and hot summer season like we have just had. The Mediterranean Sea is a prime example.
I would especially like to see a good scientific explanation of the huge swath of anomaly running across the North Pacific from Japan to the US Northwest. Where did it come from? Why is it so stationary, enabling an accumulation of up to five degrees of anomaly? You can see an oversized movement of high-altitude water vapor crossing the Pacific at that point (only for the latest 5 days) if you visit this animated website: http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php …Could this be the primary cause of the ocean heating, as the possible main source of energy? How long has that stream been running in the same general location? We need that kind of information. Meanwhile, here is a snapshot of the stream as viewed in Today’s Weather Maps:
A few other things are worth mentioning. For one, looking at both of the above images, something of a similar nature but on a smaller scale seems to be going on in the North Atlantic, at about the same latitude, same kind of vector toward the northeast. On the top map, if you look closely at the Gulf of Mexico you can get an idea of how much energy Hurricane Laura removed from the water, which will surely take at least a few weeks to recover. Also on this map, notice the strong penetration of water vapor over the continent of Antarctica, originating by way of two streams from the South Pacific that have jointly found an entry point. The explosively dramatic effect on air temperatures—with anomalies up to 25C—can be seen on this image:
Carl