SSH and SST - Pacific Ocean

This video discusses the water cycle, which is the movement of water around the Earth, and its importance to life. Changes to the water cycle affect climate and vice versa.

El Niño/La Niña - (12/1996 - 01/2000)

NASA and its U.S. and international partners have teamed up to launch a new Earth-observing satellite called Sentinel-6B that will measure sea surface height of most of the planet’s ocean. These ob...

TOPEX/Poseidon Ground Tracks

TOPEX/Poseidon Instruments

El Niño is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific. The warmer water associated with El Niño displaces colder water in the upper layer of the ocean caus...

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will join a long-standing family of Earth observing satellites from NASA and European partners.

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Launch footage

After living in coastal Virginia and seeing the effects of climate change firsthand, Ben Hamlington is now researching sea level rise at NASA JPL.

Sea level rise is an indicator that our planet is warming. When ice on land, such as mountain glaciers or the ice sheets of Greenland or Antarctica, melts, that water contributes to sea level rise.

For NASA scientist Severine Fournier, studying our planet knows no borders.

Karl and Seymour learn how carbon dioxide is formed in this sketch from The Lollygaggers, a global warming sketch comedy.

The Argo stop-motion animation aims to inspire children (and adults) to engage with marine science. It is quirky, fun and informative at the same time. The animation explains what an Argo float is,...

Sea Surface Height 01/2006-04/2010

Changing conditions in the Pacific have stirred up Earth’s largest ocean and redistributed its heat, piling up warm waters along U.S. Western shores and raising sea level in the process.

Earth’s global sea levels are rising – and are doing so at an accelerating rate.

In many communities in the U.S., sea level rise is already a factor in people’s lives in the form of high-tide flooding.

It’s not only water processes that play a role in global sea level rise – ground movements can play a significant role as well.

This animation illustrates the evolution of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (relative to the respective normal state) in the Pacific Ocean associated with the 2015-2016 El Niño.

Our planet is changing. Our ocean is rising. And it affects us all. That’s why a new international satellite will continue the decades-long watch over our global ocean and help us better understand...

The Jason-3 satellite, launched on January 17, 2016, is allowing scientists to continue a 23-year record of crucial ocean monitoring.

For over 20 years NASA has been tracking the global surface topography of the ocean in order to understand the important role it plays in our daily lives. Climate change is causing our Ocean to war...

SSH and SST - Global

Here we provide side by side comparisons of Pacific Ocean sea surface height (SSH) anomalies of what is presently happening in 2015 with the Pacific Ocean signal during the famous 1997 El Niño.

For NASA JPL engineer Parag Vaze, studying Earth’s rising ocean has been a career three decades in the making.