This is an extended caption of the GIF graphics file called SEATMP.GIF.  Image
and caption are courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.


GLOBAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE

This illustration of Earth's sea surface temperature is part of NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center's program of Earth-science research.  It
was obtained from two weeks of infrared observations by the Advanced
Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), an instrument on board NOAA-7
during July 1984.

Temperatures are color coded with red being the warmest and decreasing
through oranges, yellows, greens, and blues.

Temperature patterns seen in this image are the result of many 
influences including the circulation in the ocean, surface winds, and
solar heating.  Major ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream off the
United States East Coast, the Kuroshio off the East Coast of Japan,
the mixing of the Brazil and Falkland currents off the eastern coast
of South America, and the Agulhas off southern Africa appear as
meandering boundaries of cool and warm waters.

The image indicates a large pool of warm water in the Western Pacific
and a tongue of relatively cold water extending along the Equator
westward from South America.  Every few years, there occurs an
interrelated set of changes in the global atmospheric and oceanic
circulation known as an El Nino in which the region of warm equatorial
water in the west extends eastward across the Pacific and blankets the
cool, productive regions along the coast of South America.  Fish, 
birds, and marine mammals that depend upon the normally phytoplankton-
rich waters often die in large numbers during El Nino.

Images of sea surface temperature such as this help scientists to
better monitor and ultimately understand the changes to Earth caused
by events such as El Nino.

This study is part of NASA's multiyear global research program called
Mission to Planet Earth.  It will use ground-based, airborne, and
space-based instruments to study Earth as a complete environmental
system.  Mission to Planet Earth is NASA's contribution to the US 
Global Change Research Program, a multi-agency effort to understand,
analyze, and predict better the effect of human activity on Earth's
environment.  Goddard Space Flight Center's projects for Mission to
Planet Earth include: the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite Mission;
Earth Probes, such as the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission; the
Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer; and the most ambitious science
mission ever undertaken, the Earth Observing System.