It's that time again (yes, it is finally April!) to check out the latest global sea-surface temperature anomalies. Overall, it looks like the blues are beginning to win out a little bit over the warmer-than-normal yellows and reds, especially in the southern hemisphere, including a good chunk of the Indian and Pacific Oceans as we look at the latest image from March 27th, 2008. White areas are where there is a high enough % of sea ice.

"Patrick Henry" one of our regular commentators on this blog, was kind enough to eliminate the color table between the "normal" range of -0.5 to 0.5 on the map above with his software. Now, you can really see how the blues (below normal) clearly dominate the yellows and oranges (above normal) for that particular day late last month.

Here are the global sea-surface anomalies from around March 27th of the previous 4 years.......

2007

2006

2005

2004

La Nina

Also, it looks pretty certain that La Nina peaked out over the winter. Based on the latest imagery you can see the coolest anomalies continue to retreat farther to the west away from South America, while being replaced by slightly above-normal anomalies near and along the equator.

The chart below of the 4 ENSO (El Nino- Southern Oscillation) regions and the trend of the sea-surface temperature anomalies over the past month also support the idea of a weakening La Nina.

Here is a link to one ENSO forecast probability from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. If you look at the first chart you can see that by late summer there is a greater chance of neutral conditions compared to La Nina conditions. Other models still predict La Nina conditions through the summer, but trending weaker.