TITLE:
South Pacific’s Non-Seasonal SSTs
AUTHORS:
Kern E. Kenyon
KEYWORDS:
South Pacific, Non-Seasonal SSTs
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Science,
Vol.8 No.12,
December
14,
2016
ABSTRACT: In the western tropical South Pacific are found the highest SSTs of the year according to a classical world atlas. These temperatures are essentially no higher in the southern summer than in winter. Consequently an efficient heat balance mechanism for the surface layer occurs at all times: heat from absorbed solar radiation must be exported out. Between winter and summer, the area of highest SSTs more than doubles as indicated by the 80 F and 82.5 F contours moving south. When the areas decrease again it is proposed that a surge of warm surface layer water has exited the tropics by southward horizontal advection and is heading to mid and higher latitudes. This surge should take place to the west of a permanent wide warm surface current connecting the western tropics to the coast of South America that was proposed earlier based on two winter east/west hydrographic vertical sections at mid-latitudes. More observations are needed to confirm the conjectures.