Much of the Gulf of California surface area has warmed to 32C (90F)

Like the Middle East’s Persian Gulf, the narrow Gulf of California is surrounded by desert or semi desert terrain which heats the water in between.

In a typical summer the Gulf of California warms to between 25-30C (75-86F) with the thin strip of land on the west side known as the Baja of California heating to between 25-37C (77-100F) and 35-42C (95-107F) on the Mexican mainland to the east side.

On the land surrounding the Persian Gulf, it heats to between 37-50C (100-120F), hence why the Persian Gulf warms uniformly between 31-34C (88-93F). However, this summer has been considerably warmer than normal for northwest Mexico. Thankfully the desert surrounding the GOC isn’t quite as hot as the desert surrounding the Persian Gulf but interestingly these two bodies of waters have warmed to similar levels.

Persian Gulf

NASA

Gulf of California

NASA

The waters surrounding and extending south from the Baja is running about 4C above normal from as far north as far north as Santa Barbara, California right the way down to Mexico’s central Pacific coast. San Diego has reported it’s warmest ever SST.

Credit: Tropical Tidbits

With warmer temps and less wind, sea surface temperatures have reached a strikingly uniform 32C or 90F throughout the GOC surface area and exceeding 33C or 91F in the northern end.

Credit: Tropical Tidbits

Despite being warmer than normal both sides of the Baja of California, note the 10-12C SST difference between Pacific and Gulf of California.

It would certainly be interesting if a hurricane was to find itself over these bathtub warm waters in the coming weeks.

Tags: ,

Follow us

Connect with Mark Vogan on social media to get notified about new posts and for the latest weather updates.

Subscribe via RSS Feed Connect on YouTube

Leave a Reply

Top