Show HN: 41 years sea surface temperature anomalies (ssta.willhelps.org)

by willmeyers 73 comments 147 points
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73 comments

[−] mckirk 36d ago
Along these lines: I really like the 'Climate Reanalyzer' project by the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine [1]. There's so much good stuff there if you click around a bit; you can create custom plots for the surface temperature of different regions for example[2], which quickly shows you that Western Europe has actually warmed a lot more than the global average, and we're closer to +2°C already in that region.

[1]: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/?dm_id=world2 [2]: https://climatereanalyzer.org/research_tools/monthly_tseries...

[−] engineer_22 36d ago
[−] Windchaser 36d ago
Probably just an El Nino / La Nina oscillation. Looks similar to the changes leading up to 1998 (another big El Nino), 2016 (same), and 2024.

More glibly: "the temperature"

[−] engineer_22 35d ago
Haha, actually the long term trend changed abruptly
[−] interloxia 36d ago
I don't know but it cooencideds with the start of satellite monitoring.

Half a century of satellite remote sensing of sea-surface temperature (2019) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003442571...

I haven't looked but there will probably be references somewhere explaining the dat sources.

[−] paganel 36d ago

>

https://climatereanalyzer.org/research_tools/monthly_tseries...

It can also be clearly seen that the 2020 limit on the sulphur content in the fuel oil used on board ships [1] had quite the negative effects when it comes to surface sea temperatures, but I haven't that many climate (and not only) scientists taking responsibility of that act (even though related warnings had been made, I remember reading one just before the measure went in effect).

[1] https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/hottopics/pages/sulphur-2...

[−] wat10000 36d ago
Cutting sulphur content wasn't about climate. Why would climate scientists be taking responsibility?

Blasting pollution into the air is generally a bad idea. If it becomes necessary in order to fight warming, it should be done deliberately and with due consideration, not by having a bunch of ships burning dirty fuel.

[−] paganel 35d ago
So, who decides what? What's worst? Dirtier air or a hotter climate? Who makes those decisions? On what considerations?
[−] wat10000 35d ago
Those questions sum up one of the great problems of our time.
[−] nielsbot 36d ago
What should they say? “Turns out there’s a side effect we should put the sulfur back in diesel”?
[−] paganel 35d ago
Something like: What we scientifically thought was going to improve things has made them worst.
[−] jfengel 35d ago
It didn't make them worse. It solved one problem. That made the extent of the other existing problem more apparent.

That was known and expected. We could not continue to put sulfur in the air; it causes acid rain.

The fact that we also cannot afford to put CO2 into the air is a separate problem. That goes beyond temperature: even if additional sulfur would mitigate the temperature increase, it would also make ocean acidification worse.

[−] nielsbot 35d ago
Scientists are saying that tho. We’re talking about those findings rn. Not sure what point you’re trying to make. Scientists don’t own their mistakes?
[−] mistrial9 36d ago
"those three ants there ruined my picnic" ?
[−] Scarblac 36d ago
In general I think the sea warms slower than land, so you'd expect land everywhere to warm faster than the global average.
[−] ninalanyon 34d ago
This March (2026) in Norway was nearly 4 K warmer than the preceding thirty year average for March, and 0.6 K warmer than the previous record set about 10 years ago.

So I could easily believe that we are already at +2 K for the year as whole.

[−] croemer 36d ago
In case you wonder how the anomaly is calculated:

   The daily global 5km SSTA product requires a daily climatology to calculate the daily SST anomalies. Daily climatologies (DC) are derived from the monthly mean (MM) climatology via linear interpolation. To achieve this, we assigned the MM value to the 15th day of each corresponding month, with the individual days between these dates being derived using linear interpolation.

   We then calculate the SSTA product using: SST_anomaly = SST - DC where the SST is the value for the day in question, and DC is the corresponding daily climatology for that day of the year.
[−] callumprentice 36d ago
I made something like this (in the VERY broadest sense) 10 years ago - inspired me to revisit and update both visuals and data (a lot has changed in that time).

https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/global_temperature_cha...

and

https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/climate_temperature_ch...

[−] pimlottc 36d ago
This looks cool but it's missing a clear legend on the default view to help the viewer understand what they're looking at.

It's not immediately clear if it's just absolute temperatures or relative temperatures or what. You have to look at the color scale to notice that it's from -5 to +5. But relative to what? Over what timescale? Is it a moving average?

I guess I could dig into the data link to figure it out but most people aren't going to do that.

[−] zug_zug 36d ago
Very emotionally powerful to watch something play out, even if I'm already consciously aware of it. Would love a speed where I can watch the whole dataset play out in about 1 minute.
[−] ferfumarma 36d ago
This is all terrifying data.
[−] cjauvin 36d ago
For those interested in this type of climate data visualization apps, I have worked on this one in the past, which is actively maintained with a lot of love, and very nice:

https://portraits.ouranos.ca/en

[−] illwrks 36d ago
Very nice. I had a quick look at the data source and I wonder if the more recent data is more sensitive/better quality since 2020? There's a clear trend of the oceans getting warmer but recently it seems like there's more and more heat retained.

"CRW's first-generation global monitoring products were operational at NOAA until April 30, 2020, when they were officially retired, and succeeded by CRW's next-generation operational daily monitoring products."

[−] marginalx 36d ago
I don't quite understand the temperature color scale of -5 to 5, what is the baseline here on -5 to 5, is it relative to global average of that day? Or a period of time?
[−] rob_c 36d ago
Serious question. Why are there static (in absolute positional terms) anomalies in the data that seem to be recording at the other end of the spectrum to their immediate surrounding waters?

Also nice to see several shipping lanes crop up when watching it.

[−] Gravityloss 36d ago
Awesome! Maybe there could be even larger speeds and timesteps.
[−] HumblyTossed 36d ago
We're frogs, slowly boiling ourselves...
[−] kittikitti 36d ago
This is great, thank you for posting this!
[−] adcent 36d ago
I jumped to my birth date and found it's much colder than today.
[−] imagetic 36d ago
More of this!
[−] fedorsapronov 36d ago
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[−] simonebrunozzi 36d ago
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[−] mc-serious 36d ago
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