Latest Still Images with contours Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Interest in the present developing 2015-2016 El Niño is high. Here we provide side by side comparisons of Pacific Ocean sea surface height (SSH) anomalies of what is presently happening in 2015-2016 with the Pacific Ocean signal during the famous 1997-1998 El Niño. These 1997-1998 and 2015-2016 El Niño animations were made from data collected by the TOPEX/Poseidon (1997-1998) and the OSTM/Jason-2 (2015-2016) satellites. Jason-2 continues to provide an uninterrupted time-series that originated in 1992 with TOPEX/Poseidon. TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 and Jason-2 is use space-based radar altimetry to collect sea surface height data of all the world's oceans. Here, these images are processed to highlight the interannual signal of SSH. The mean signal, seasonal signal, and the trend have been removed.

To learn more, read What is sea-surface height?

1997-1998 vs. 2015-2016 Comparison

• Full sized - 2000px (GIF, 49.9 MB)
• Medium - 800px (GIF, 9.6 MB)
• Small - 485px (GIF, 4.1 MB)
• MP4 - 10fps (37.1 MB)

• 2015-2016 Only (GIF, 29 MB)

This is the latest still of the 1997-1998 vs. 2015-2016 El Nino events. Larger image