This product is intended to provide emergency managers, planners, forecasters and the public advance notice of potential threats related to climate, weather and hydrological events. Equatorial SSTs now average slightly above normal west of 160W and below normal SSTs in the eastern equatorial Pacific east of about 140W longitude. Temperatures have warmed steadily near and west of the dateline during the last several months, mainly from solar heating.
Temperatures there are now mostly between a half and one degree C above normal.
Sub-surface warm water continues to make its way eastward from the west Pacific. The recent trend toward weak warm anomalies makes it unlikely cold conditions will return this winter. Slightly warmer than normal SSTs are now indicated by the forecast tools to be likely over the central Equatorial Pacific then. So far, there have been eight named tropical storms in the Atlantic Basin, and SSTs are now warm enough to support organized convection and tropical cyclogenesis. The Atlantic basin is expected to be under the influence of neither enhanced nor suppressed tropical development due to the MJO during this assessement period.