I'd forgotten what a strong El Nino year was like.

better get mooring lines.

here in Western Canada. Record breaking heat. Hit 94 today. No rain. Still.

I read somewhere that this El Niño is a lot like 1987's. I hope not. That's the year a rare F4 tornado came through where I live.

Other sources confirm the likelihood of a strong El Nino, but as tends to be the case with USA Today, that article is essentially gibberish.

Weather satellites are not going to show El Nino because they show cloud cover and aerial phenomena, and El Nino is sea surface temperature. Cyclones and typhoons are the result of El Nino, not causation of it, and the trade winds have weakened, allowing the warmer water to move eastward, but they have not reversed direction.

I'm not sure what instrumentation the Japanese satellite carries but it's not impossible to get data on sea surface temp from satellite remote sensing.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jmaurer/sst/

Sea surface temperature (SST) is an important geophysical parameter, providing the boundary condition used in the estimation of heat flux at the air-sea interface. On the global scale this is important for climate modeling, study of the earth's heat balance, and insight into atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns and anomalies (such as El Niño). On a more local scale, SST can be used operationally to assess eddies, fronts and upwellings for marine navigation and to track biological productivity.

Satellite technology has improved upon our ability to measure SST by allowing frequent and global coverage. In the past, SST could only be measured by ships and buoys, whose ranges were limited. Below are two maps illustrating this point:


Methods for determining SST from satellite remote sensing include thermal infrared and passive microwave radiometry. Both methods have their own strengths and weaknesses, which are outlined below. Gary Wick's current research investigates techniques for combining the strengths of both of these methods into a blended SST product which will hopefully improve upon existing SST measurements. Climatologists have stated the need for accuracy on the order of 0.3 Kelvin (World Climate Research Program, 1985) while the best accuracy possible today is only on the order of ~0.6 Kelvin.

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I never suggested that we could not. I said that a weather satellite would not, because a weather satellite is designed and used for looking at the weather, which happens in the atmosphere. Not to mention that the image displayed by the peurile USA Today article was a weather satellite image of cloud formations in the atmosphere, which confirmed my assertions.

Seems planners for weather satellites would include it if they had opportunity as ocean temps have real significance for weather forecasts.

surprised me, we haven't seen rain since spring, and now its Summer. Something is going on as I can't recall Rain in the summer time.