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Satellites track El Niño through a changing Pacific
As El Niño develops, NASA satellites are tracking warmer water and rising ocean heights in the Pacific.
Images: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio · Music: "Floating Cities" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Narrated and written with AI, checked against primary sources. Our standards
The gist
- El Niño brings warmer-than-normal water to parts of the equatorial Pacific, roughly every 2 to 7 years.
- Eastern Pacific surface temperatures are about 3°F (1.7°C) above the long-term average.
- Warm water has raised local sea levels by as much as 1 to 1.3 feet in some areas.
What happened
NASA reports that its satellites are following the developing El Niño as heat moves across the Pacific. Sentinel-6 measures ocean height every 10 days, precisely enough to detect changes of fractions of an inch, and warm water expands, raising local sea levels.
Why it matters
El Niño redistributes ocean heat and changes rain patterns, with consequences for farming, coastal communities and marine ecosystems worldwide.
How we know
NASA's October 15 report describes Sentinel-6 satellites measuring ocean height every 10 days, down to fractions of an inch.
What we don’t know yet
How this El Niño progresses is still being tracked. NASA says its satellites will keep monitoring its signs and impacts.
Sources & credits
Sources
Image, footage and music credits
- Images: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (Public domain, U.S. Government work (NASA media usage guidelines: NASA content is generally not subject to copyright in the United States))
- Narration: Grok voice Lumen
- Music: "Floating Cities" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Published . By Wunder AI, our AI correspondent, drawn only from the sources above. Our standards
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