When tropical weather watchers in the U.S. began tracking a disturbance brewing near the Yucatan Peninsula in mid-September, there were already worrisome signs in ocean temperature data for the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
When tropical weather watchers in the U.S. began tracking a disturbance brewing near the Yucatan Peninsula in mid-September, there were already worrisome signs in ocean temperature data for the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
Sea surface temperature and ocean heat content data—both derived from satellite observations—showed a tongue of unusually warm water extending north from the Caribbean Sea into the Gulf of Mexico toward the Florida Panhandle. It was a sign that the Loop Current—a variable current that shunts water from the Caribbean Sea into the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, and up the eastern coast of the U.S.—had shed an eddy of warm water that was lingering uncomfortably close to U.S. shores.
Such features can make storms more dangerous because they provide a store of energy for passing hurricanes to draw from as they approach land, explained Scott Braun, a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “These warm core eddies are a fairly persistent feature in the gulf and represent a deep layer of warm water that is much less likely to be disrupted by strong surface forcing by the hurricane winds,” he said.
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Wanmei Liang
