This resulted from the combined effects of
high sea surface temperatures in open water areas and the effects of atmospheric circulation drawing warm air into the region.
Much warmer - than - average temperatures engulfed most of the world's oceans during June 2016, with
record high sea surface temperatures across parts of the central and southwest Pacific Ocean, northwestern and southwestern Atlantic Ocean, and across parts of the northeastern Indian Ocean.
El Niño is the warm phase of the ENSO, characterized by
unusually high sea surface temperatures along the equator in the Pacific, lasting between nine months and two years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority have detected
abnormally high sea surface temperatures on the UNESCO world heritage site, indicating that another massive bleaching event will soon hit the already dead reef.
The rains, at least meteorologically speaking, were not unexpected; the combination of slow - moving, low - pressure tropical air mass fed
by high sea surface temperatures, and record humidity — in addition to the unpredictability of climate change — make catastrophic floods more likely.
For instance, the rapid transition from El Niño prior to May 2010 to La Niña by July 2010 along with global warming contributed to the record
high sea surface temperatures in the tropical Indian and Atlantic Oceans and in close proximity to places where record flooding subsequently occurred.
This image depicts the output of a computer model designed to reproduce the weather conditions that created Hurricane (later Superstorm) Sandy in October 2012, with one key difference: The model
included higher sea surface temperatures, which resulted in storms more than twice as destructive as Sandy.
However, to support the assertion that global warming is responsible for a great deal of damage from such events, it is sufficient to show that such events have the «signature» of global warming — for example, that specific global warming - related factors such as
abnormally high sea surface temperatures, elevated water vapor levels, and altered jet stream patterns contributed to making Hurricane Sandy what it was — even if those factors can not be precisely quantified.
Both the 2005 and 2010 droughts were the result of a «very, very unusual» weather pattern linked to
higher sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, said lead author Simon Lewis, a tropical forests expert at the University of Leeds.
However, these same species are also the most vulnerable to
higher sea surface temperatures.
The western tropical Pacific is known as the «warm pool» with
the highest sea surface temperature (SST) in the world (on average).
«
Higher sea surface temperatures are continually reinforced by the extra sub-surface heat, and hence the ocean influences surface weather and climate especially through more intense rains,» the study said.
The second possibility, as feedback to
higher sea surface temperatures, seems also more sensitive for solar in the tropics than for GHGs in the higher latitudes...
Please don't lose the bigger perspective and the undoubted effects of
high sea surface temperatures, of which a component is human induced climate change, on these events.
The western tropical Pacific is known as the «warm pool» with
the highest sea surface temperature (SST) in the world (on average).
There are certainly issues related to warnings and building codes, but you seem to unduly discount climate change and
high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf.
The change in radiation balance is more heating of the oceans at one side (specifically high in the subtropics, as expected), but more heat released at higher altitudes, thus somewhere acting as a net negative feedback to
higher sea surface temperatures.
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University and the study's lead author, says the historical peak in hurricane activity coincided with periods of
high sea surface temperatures.
Record
high sea surface temperatures were observed across the northern Pacific waters near Alaska, the Bering Sea, parts of the southern and western Pacific, a long swath of the western Atlantic stretching to the Gulf of Mexico, parts of the southern and eastern Indian Ocean extending across the waters of southeastern Asia island nations and Oceania.
The combined effects of
the high sea surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation led to a pattern in which for the Arctic, unusual warmth in October extended from the surface through a deep layer of the atmosphere (Figure 2d).
A new study based on 450 years of documentary and fossil evidence suggests that climate change driven by human combustion of fossil fuels is shifting the pathways of the hurricanes linked with the western Caribbean, and that global warming in the form of
higher sea surface temperatures is affecting their intensity.
«
Higher sea surface temperatures are continually reinforced by the extra sub-surface heat, and hence the ocean influences surface weather and climate especially through more intense rains,» the study said.
The recent increases in activity are linked, in part, to
higher sea surface temperatures in the region that Atlantic hurricanes form in and move through.
The U.S. National Climate Assessment finds that there has been a substantial increase — in intensity, frequency, and duration as well as the number of strongest (Category 4 and 5) storms — in Atlantic Ocean hurricanes since the early 1980s, linked in part to
higher sea surface temperatures.