Sea surface temperature refers to the temperature of the top millimeter of the ocean. An anomaly is a departure from average conditions. These maps compare temperatures in a given month to the long-term average temperature of that month from 1985 through 1997. Blue shows temperatures that were cooler than average, white shows near-average temperatures, and red shows where temperatures were warmer than average. Regions for which no data were available are gray. The maps are made from data collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) compared to historical data collected by a series of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites.
Land surface temperature is how hot the “surface” of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location. From a satellite’s point of view, the “surface” is whatever it sees when it looks through the atmosphere to the ground. It could be snow and ice, the grass on a lawn, or the roof of a building. These maps compare daytime land surface temperatures in a particular month to the average temperatures for that month from 2000-2008. Places that were warmer than average are red, places that were near normal are white, and places that were cooler than average are blue. The observations were collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
View, download, or analyze more of these data from NASA Earth Observations (NEO):
Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly
Land Surface Temperature Anomaly