Rapid warming in global sea surface temperature since around 2013

Abstract

Since around 2013, the globally averaged sea surface temperature has rapidly warmed up and reached its highest on record. During this time, there was an intensifying El Niño event that caused positive temperature anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Compared with the conditions observed in 1997/98, when the previous highest record was marked associated with strong El Niño event, there were notable differences detected in the recent conditions. In the tropical Pacific, remarkable warming near sea surface associated with strong El Niño event in 2015/16 started from significantly warmed conditions along with positive temperature anomaly redistributed from the western part since early 2014, resulting in positive anomalies in the central to eastern part remaining for more than two years, much longer than 1997/98 event. In addition, substantial warming was observed in the North Pacific around 2013 and contribution of the North Pacific region to the global averaged SST anomaly marked significantly large value and was comparable to that of the tropical Pacific.