[HN Gopher] Show HN: 41 years sea surface temperature anomalies
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Show HN: 41 years sea surface temperature anomalies
Author : willmeyers
Score : 126 points
Date : 2026-04-09 12:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ssta.willhelps.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ssta.willhelps.org)
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Awesome! Maybe there could be even larger speeds and timesteps.
| mcluck wrote:
| This was my first thought. I'd like to see it running at like
| 10x or more to better grasp the change over time
| imagetic wrote:
| More of this!
| zug_zug wrote:
| Very emotionally powerful to watch something play out, even if
| I'm already consciously aware of it. Would love a speed where I
| can watch the whole dataset play out in about 1 minute.
| jstanley wrote:
| What are we seeing play out? It just looks like some areas are
| warm and some are cold?
| iso1631 wrote:
| I can't believe there are still so-called intellegent people
| coming out with this crap.
|
| 1985 sure. Maybe 2000
|
| But now?
| rob_c wrote:
| I'll give you 2 reasons.
|
| a) published data tends to see corrections from sensors and
| methodology which take several years to work out the fine
| details. (This isn't an attack this is science) Which means
| always take yesterday's numbers with more scepticism than
| 2yr ago. (This is making no statement of any data you're
| looking at or any trend you claim to see)
|
| b) a field dominated by modelling needs data to back it up,
| otherwise the conversation would be, "Why is the LHC
| failing to find strong theory which is absolutely there" vs
| "I wonder if the modelling is correct based on..." This is
| a certain level of maturity that certain sciences are only
| starting to reach after playing in the ballpark of "let's
| go model my idea and make a press release which will just
| so happen to help my funding".
|
| Yes sea level temps are rising, absolute numbers are still
| difficult to come by though and last UN summary doc I read
| still put things at 5C global average over a century. (Yes
| still horrifically catastrophic for the wrong people, but
| I'm also not in charge)
| zug_zug wrote:
| I doubt it has anything to do with data-quality, I'd be
| surprised if even 10% of climate denialists have studied
| the numbers. Remember >20% of US citizens are still
| creationists, a lot of people aren't emotionally ready to
| believe scary things, and maybe they never will be.
| rob_c wrote:
| And believing the world ending as in "the day after
| tomorrow" was the "still mask wearing" of the 2010s.
| Fear.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Feels like a really weak bad-faith take.
|
| I guess you're trying to draw a false-equivalency between
| taking a problem extra seriously and denying/perpetuating
| it? However taking a problem too seriously doesn't harm
| people, if you want to wear a mask out of an abundance of
| caution you won't kill anybody else.
|
| Also nobody believed the world was going to end in two
| days, that feels like a disingenuous talking point. If
| somebody literally believed the world would end in < 10
| years they'd likely quit their job, spend all their
| savings, etc.
|
| If your point is that you've met ~15 individuals in your
| life who were obnoxious/self-righteous/unlikeable about
| their attempts to make the world better -- congrats every
| movement has that. But it can't distract from the fact
| that one thing is true and the other is false, and
| anybody who tries to focus more on the stereotypes of the
| individuals in a movement than whether it's true or not
| is only creating noise.
| rob_c wrote:
| No I'm talking about proper healthy science not blind
| trust. Please don't confuse discussion with argument it's
| disingenuous and best I can say is look inwards.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Jesus Christ, dude. That was a disaster movie by the same
| guy that brought us Independence Day and 2012, based on a
| book by a radio host best known for possibly facilitating
| the Heaven's Gate mass suicide by feeding rumors a UFO
| was following the Hale-Bopp comet, and a writer who has
| peddled personal tales of alien abductions for 40 years.
| Not exactly a reliable central tendency measure of what
| real people feared.
|
| This has to be one of the stupidest false equivalences
| I've ever seen.
| vscode-rest wrote:
| I take it you have data against creationism?
|
| Or that it is somehow less "scary"?
| Windchaser wrote:
| Indeed, there is quite a lot of data against
| (Biblical/young-earth) creationism.
|
| Everything from "humans' chromosome 2 is a fusion of two
| other chromosomes, and we see those two other chromosomes
| still present in chimpanzees and gorillas and bonobos",
| which argues for common descent, to "when zircon crystals
| form, they accept radioactive uranium but violently
| reject the lead that it decays to, and modern zircon
| crystals have lead-uranium ratios indicating that they
| formed billions of years ago", arguing for an old age of
| the universe. And many, many, many, many other pieces of
| evidence.
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Chromosomal similarity argues for solid engineering
| principles just as much as it does common decent. Do you
| have any data to suggest that the almighty did not take a
| working chromosome 2 (made in their own image, perhaps),
| and reuse it in these other animals you reference?
| saalweachter wrote:
| Nothing about the human body argues for solid engineering
| principles.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| No, most of these people consciously or otherwise, just
| want/need to be contrarians. Look at flat Earthers. There
| is no way any sane person would say the earth is flat.
| rob_c wrote:
| Please don't bring up another thing started by idiot
| scientists for a laugh to laugh at stupid people. You
| have no idea what it's like dealing with the "just open
| your eyes" and "what else are they hiding" tier of
| pseudo-intellectualism enabled by nu-media.
|
| There are reasons to be sceptical which are set in reason
| and it's worth not throwing that out with the bath water.
| Even if the bath water is full of low iq bitchute
| comments...
| drc500free wrote:
| If you tap the images on mobile, there is an animation.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| We're frogs, slowly boiling ourselves...
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Turns out frogs are smarter than humans ..
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC534568/
| callumprentice wrote:
| I made something like this (in the VERY broadest sense) 10 years
| ago - inspired me to revisit and update both visuals and data (a
| lot has changed in that time).
|
| https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/global_temperature_cha...
|
| and
|
| https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/climate_temperature_ch...
| mckirk wrote:
| Along these lines: I really like the 'Climate Reanalyzer' project
| by the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine [1].
| There's so much good stuff there if you click around a bit; you
| can create custom plots for the surface temperature of different
| regions for example[2], which quickly shows you that Western
| Europe has actually warmed a lot more than the global average,
| and we're closer to +2degC already in that region.
|
| [1]: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/?dm_id=world2
| [2]:
| https://climatereanalyzer.org/research_tools/monthly_tseries...
| Scarblac wrote:
| In general I think the sea warms slower than land, so you'd
| expect land everywhere to warm faster than the global average.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| https://climatereanalyzer.org/research_tools/monthly_tseries...
|
| What changed in 1979?
| interloxia wrote:
| I don't know but it cooencideds with the start of satellite
| monitoring.
|
| Half a century of satellite remote sensing of sea-surface
| temperature (2019) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti
| cle/pii/S003442571...
|
| I haven't looked but there will probably be references
| somewhere explaining the dat sources.
| Windchaser wrote:
| Probably just an El Nino / La Nina oscillation. Looks similar
| to the changes leading up to 1998 (another big El Nino), 2016
| (same), and 2024.
|
| More glibly: "the temperature"
| paganel wrote:
| >
| https://climatereanalyzer.org/research_tools/monthly_tseries...
|
| It can also be clearly seen that the 2020 limit on the sulphur
| content in the fuel oil used on board ships [1] had quite the
| negative effects when it comes to surface sea temperatures, but
| I haven't that many climate (and not only) scientists taking
| responsibility of that act (even though related warnings had
| been made, I remember reading one just before the measure went
| in effect).
|
| [1]
| https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/hottopics/pages/sulphur-2...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "those three ants there ruined my picnic" ?
| rob_c wrote:
| Serious question. Why are there static (in absolute positional
| terms) anomalies in the data that seem to be recording at the
| other end of the spectrum to their immediate surrounding waters?
|
| Also nice to see several shipping lanes crop up when watching it.
| cjauvin wrote:
| For those interested in this type of climate data visualization
| apps, I have worked on this one in the past, which is actively
| maintained with a lot of love, and very nice:
|
| https://portraits.ouranos.ca/en
| illwrks wrote:
| Very nice. I had a quick look at the data source and I wonder if
| the more recent data is more sensitive/better quality since 2020?
| There's a clear trend of the oceans getting warmer but recently
| it seems like there's more and more heat retained.
|
| "CRW's first-generation global monitoring products were
| operational at NOAA until April 30, 2020, when they were
| officially retired, and succeeded by CRW's next-generation
| operational daily monitoring products."
| bkor wrote:
| As said by someone else, the temperature of the oceans rose
| significantly more after the low sulphur regulation went into
| effect. See
| https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/hottopics/pages/sulphur-2...
| for the regulation.
| ferfumarma wrote:
| This is all terrifying data.
| pstuart wrote:
| Made worse that there's a significant number of people who
| refuse to believe it, and for all the wrong reasons at that.
| lp4v4n wrote:
| Global warming doesn't exist.
|
| If it does, it's not that bad.
|
| If it gets bad, it's not a big deal in reality.
|
| If it becomes a big deal, it was not humanity's fault.
|
| And if it was humanity's fault, at least the planet was saved
| from a global dictatorship run by scientists.
| metalman wrote:
| The OG, SST
|
| https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/sst/contour/
| pimlottc wrote:
| This looks cool but it's missing a clear legend on the default
| view to help the viewer understand what they're looking at.
|
| It's not immediately clear if it's just absolute temperatures or
| relative temperatures or what. You have to look at the color
| scale to notice that it's from -5 to +5. But relative to what?
| Over what timescale? Is it a moving average?
|
| I guess I could dig into the data link to figure it out but most
| people aren't going to do that.
| adcent wrote:
| I jumped to my birth date and found it's much colder than today.
| croemer wrote:
| In case you wonder how the anomaly is calculated:
| The daily global 5km SSTA product requires a daily climatology to
| calculate the daily SST anomalies. Daily climatologies (DC) are
| derived from the monthly mean (MM) climatology via linear
| interpolation. To achieve this, we assigned the MM value to the
| 15th day of each corresponding month, with the individual days
| between these dates being derived using linear interpolation.
| We then calculate the SSTA product using: SST_anomaly = SST - DC
| where the SST is the value for the day in question, and DC is the
| corresponding daily climatology for that day of the year.
| marginalx wrote:
| This doesn't give me a clear idea as a layman on how to
| interpret this information. Is it ok for the layman to believe
| that may 1st 1985 the variations of -5 to 5 were around 86 mean
| but in 2025 the same were around 82 mean, if that were to be
| the case, irrespective of the variations, it would not give me
| an idea of whether its concerning or not (this is just a random
| example, don't read too much into my beliefs)
| marginalx wrote:
| I don't quite understand the temperature color scale of -5 to 5,
| what is the baseline here on -5 to 5, is it relative to global
| average of that day? Or a period of time?
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(page generated 2026-04-09 17:00 UTC)