Sea Surface Temperature 1982 - 2007

The oceans are a critical component of the dynamic earth system. They are a major forcing agent on the atmosphere and possess significant inertia. The image below shows the median trend of anomalies in monthly sea surface temperatures from 1982 to 2007 inclusive as determined by the Earth Trends Modeler. The data are from the Optimally Interpolated Version 2 (OIV2) series by Smith and Reynolds. The median trend is notable because it is resistant to outliers and expresses trends that have endured for at least 29% of the length of the series. Thus the trends evident in this image have persisted for at least seven and a half years.


The most notable features of this image include:

• Intense warming in the sub-polar gyre near Greenland, the North Sea and along the sea ice edge towards Svalbard.
• A strongly higher frequency of warming sea surface temperatures than cooling temperatures.
• Generally, a higher warming in the north Atlantic.

The units represent the rate of change per month in degrees Celsius. The image has been contrast stretched to a range between +/- 0.0045 degrees Celsius which represents a change of over 1.4 degrees Celsius over the length of the series. However, the change is even higher in the Labrador Sea in the top loop of the sub-polar gyre. Here is a temporal profile of anomalies over this period created using the Earth Trends Modeler.


The trend line is also a robust Theil-Sen median trend.