This color-coded satellite image shows high sea surface temperatures — above 28 degrees Celsius (82 Fahrenheit) — are prevalent across the equatorial and tropical Atlantic Ocean as the 2010 hurricane season gets underway. Such warm temperatures, recorded by Japan’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite, are a major reason why the U.S. government has forecast an “active to extremely active” Atlantic hurricane season this year. Hurricanes tend to form when sea surface temperatures rise above 28 Celsius, as indicated by the yellow and orange colors on the map. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week projected a 70 percent probability this year for 14 to 23 named tropical storms, 8 to 14 hurricanes, and 3 to 7 major hurricanes. This year’s high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic were recorded amid growing indications that global ocean temperatures are rising as the world warms. NOAA reported that last summer’s mean ocean surface temperatures were 62.5 degrees F, the warmest since records began being kept in 1880 and 1 degree F above the 20th century average. A study released last month reported that “significant warming” had occurred in the upper layer of the world’s oceans since 1993.
From Yale 360
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