A massive wave of warm water is making its way across the Pacific Ocean as the newly declared El Niño gets into full swing, satellite images show.
The band, called a Kelvin wave, marks a swell of higher-than-average sea levels that stretches hundreds of miles along the equator. The anomaly is caused by warmer waters linked to El Niño — the warm phase of a natural climate pattern whose current iteration could become one of the strongest ever recorded.
The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite captured the deviations from average sea surface height on June 8. Red areas indicate higher sea surfaces than usual, while blue areas mark areas with lower surface heights.
Developed and launched in 2020 by NASA and the European Space Agency and operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich measures changes in sea surface height down to fractions of an inch every 10 days.
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