Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
60°N
282
30°N
294
297
300
300
300
Equator
300
300
300
297
297
297
30°S
294
294
294
282
282
282
2
76
276
60°S
30°E
60°E
90°E 120°E 150°E 180° 150°W
120°W 90°W 60°W 30°W 0°
Figure 2.15 The annual mean sea surface temperature climatology. Contour interval is 3K.
warm pool
, is more than 5 K warmer than the eastern tropical Pacific, which
is referred to as the
cold tongue
region.
• In contrast to the Paciic and Atlantic Oceans, annual mean Indian Ocean sea
surface temperatures are zonally uniform.
• Sea surface temperature gradients are especially strong off the east coasts of
Asia and North America, north of about 30°N, similar in placement to the
atmospheric geopotential height gradients and temperatures in this region.
Sea surface temperatures for DJF and JJA are displayed in
Figure 2.16
, along
with their difference.
• The greatest seasonality in sea surface temperatures occurs in the middle
latitudes of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans.
• Seasonal differences in sea surface temperatures are much smaller than
seasonal differences in surface air temperatures (compare with
Fig. 2.7c)
.
• Southern Hemisphere seasonality in sea surface temperatures is smaller and
more disorganized than seasonality in the Northern Hemisphere.
To explore the vertical dependence of ocean temperature, meridional cross
sections taken through the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans are displayed in
Fig-
ure 2.17.
The Pacific Ocean section is along the International Date Line (180°
longitude), and the Atlantic Ocean section is along 30°W. The white regions
outline the ocean bottom topography, and where they reach the surface they
indicate the presence of continents. Note the distortion in the space scale. As
for the atmospheric cross sections, the vertical scale is expanded in the figure
relative to the horizontal scale so the details of the temperature structure can
be seen. But again, as for the atmosphere, the vertical scale of the ocean is many
orders of magnitude smaller than its horizontal scale.
