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Ocean warmth sets a record for July

August 15th, 2009, 7:00 am · 5 Comments · posted by

The average surface temperature of the world’s oceans this year set a record: the warmest ever measured for the month of July. julytempgoc

The combined average temperature for land and sea surfaces also was the fifth warmest for July since global record-keeping began in 1880, according to a monthly climate snapshot by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

July’s global ocean-surface temperature was 62.56 degrees Fahrenheit, 1.06 degrees above the average for the 20th century.

Much of the ocean warming was the result of a strong El Niño pattern developing in the eastern Pacific, said Kelly T. Redmond, regional climatologist at the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nevada.

“That area there might not look all that big,” Redmond said of a NOAA map showing a yellow splotch — elevated ocean temperatures — stretching across the south and central American coasts near the equator. “When you put it in true perspective it’s practically twice the size of the United States.”

(See larger version of map; courtesy NOAA.)

But broad conclusions about global climate trends drawn from measurements over short periods can be misleading, Redmond and other climate scientists say — even if “short” means a decade.

“We just went through a kind of somewhat cooler year in the western United States in ’08,” he said. “It cooled off quite a bit in the past 10 years or so. We still didn’t get down to the long-term average. The western United States is rising 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 30 years or so.”

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     5 Comments

    • rick4us says:
      August 15, 2009 at 9:11 am

      The headline ‘Ocean warmth sets a record for July’ got my attention as potentially an interesting article.

      However, the detail seems sorely lacking. I’m not really sure how to read the chart and the facts provided seem like they could be inappropriately skewed by biased analysis.

      Sorry, but I don’t trust the ‘green’ environmentalists use of statistics. Interesting how they were using 10 year trends to prove their point and now that 10 year trends are down, they will say a 30 year trend is more valid. Statistics can be skewed by different temperature tracking methods over time and there could be a variety of reasons for temperature changes.

      I don’t really get the reason for this article other than to try to convince the public that global warming is getting worse each year.

    • sb335fast says:
      August 15, 2009 at 9:20 am

      Not going to be a typical commenter and say how the OCR didn’t provide a numerical data to go along with this article. Just wondering how this is relevant to OC and wondering how our local ocean temperature is affected?? Maybe in the next climate report…

    • bobbyc says:
      August 15, 2009 at 9:40 am

      I really hope this means we will get some serious rain here in So. Cal this fall and winter. I am SICK of conserving water!

    • cool it says:
      August 17, 2009 at 6:40 am

      By looking at the map it appears that the big bad US of A has average or even cooling coastal temps, strangely enough if there is any warming off the coast of the USA it is up in the Northwest where you tend to find the granola type environmentalists.

      I wonder if this map was really just Al Gore passing some time with his crayons?

      Go figure

    • Professor W says:
      August 17, 2009 at 6:48 am

      Don’t show Landsbaum this…

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