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Not sure what the real big difference between the two plots is, typhoon_tip. The hurricane heat content product is one that also takes into account sub-surface waters. Anywhere you see SSTs of ~27C or greater on the one map, you do see a non-zero (even if it is 1-10 kcal/cm^2) value of HHC; do note that the SST map only goes out to 60W (as noted in the header). However, those waters in the north Atlantic are only warm at the very top; the waters just beneath the surface are much cooler (<26C) and thus do not provide any heat content for the storm to use to maintain/increase its intensity. Waters in the Caribbean and Gulf, however, are warm to very large depths, bringing about very high values of HHC -- especially associated with the loop current and the climatologically warm waters in the NW Caribbean.

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As I laid mention just moments ago, I had reasoned that they must be talking the thermocline, which indeed deals more with a vertical mixing layer... But, either way, if you see ~27C, that doesn't mean that it is "O" now does it?
As far as "60W" goes, I'm looking at a still anam that covers the entire wester/sw Atlantic Basin, when I'm looking at : http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/FS_km14nat00.gif... That clearly shows a warmer surface...However, I am willing to concede that this may be shallow, which is (quite frankly) hard to believe because a) the Gulf stream is there and that is 100 meters deep in some cases, and
b) there hasn't been anything to process the upper oceanic heat content this season in that district of the open ocean. Nor, has there been a substantial arctic outbreak spreading seawards from the continent.

Sorry, I still believe there may be a statistical disparity between what the ir impression of the sst is and these plots at the other site are. But, that's just opinion until I can see a better write up that tells us what the physics of the derivation and methodology is beyond the supposition of this forum
peace.

Edited by typhoon_tip (Sun Oct 16 2005 12:37 AM)

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