A Few Spiffy El Niño Animations
Animations are on loop but if it doesn't work, hit "reload" to rerun them
Images courtesy of NOAA/PMEL's TAO site, compiled by C. Coulon
This animation of surface temperatures mean and anomaly (from Jan 1997 to March 1999) shows you the latest El Niño and La Niña events, as seen on the ocean surface.
Images courtesy of NOAA/PMEL's TAO site, compiled by C. Coulon
This animation of depth temperatures mean and anomaly (from Jan 1997 to March 1999) shows you the latest El Niño and La Niña events, as seen through the ocean depth, along the equator. I think this gives you a better idea of the incredibly large masses of water involved in these events.
This
image shows the temperature of the surface waters of the equatorial Pacific
ocean mapped onto a gridded simulation of the elevation of the sea surface. The
entire sequence shows the cycle from ENSO warming (El Niņo - warm and high sea
levels in the east) to ENSO cooling (La Niņa - cold and low sea levels in the
east). The illustration shows a decidedly wave-like aspect of ENSO, but the
timescale for wave movement from trough to trough or crest to crest is several
years. Joe Barsuglia made this animation......NOAA/UW/CIRES.
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