Saturday, October 03, 2026

El Nino region's amazing SST

Here's a chart (thanks Grok) showing the sea surface temperature of the Nino3.4 region in the central Pacific Ocean. The SST is going off the chart. 

The high bulge to the right of 2026's line is 2015, which peaked on Nov 18, 2015 at 29.81°C, an anomaly of 3.26°C relative to a baseline of 1982-2010. 


Here's a time series of the same region. If El Ninos' strength is increasing over time, I wouldn't say it's obvious from this graph? What do you think?

Of course someone should do a calculation.

Ocean Heat Content Clearly Accelerating

Here are the latest ocean heat content numbers from NOAA, through 1Q2026. Eyeballing, it looks clear that OHC is accelerating for both regions. 

0-700 m region: linear slope = 0.22 W/m2 = 0.035°C/decade

                           acceleration = 0.0089 (W/m2)/yr = 8.9 (mW/m2)/yr

where "mW" is milliwatts. 

0-2000 m region: linear slope = 0.68 W/m2 = 0.037°C/decade

                             acceleration = 0.0079 (W/m2)/yr = 7.9 (mW/m2)/yr

The R2 numbers are all high, > 0.90.

All this bother over milliwatts!   :-)

PS: corrections welcome, especially on the unit conversions.


Friday, October 02, 2026

Island Boy

This lively woman, Brooke Eby, said she was finally diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, or, she says, the same disease that Stephen Hawking had, "before he became an island boy." 

I hope you know what that means. 

I wonder if that will be his lasting impression in the public sphere.

Don't know if any of you care. Probably not.

-=-=-

Her name is Brooke Eby. She had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., at 33. She died yesterday at the age of 37.