Antarctic Sea Surface Temperature (part 1)

I take a look at sea surface temperature for 60 – 90° South to find rather patchy data and a rather complex situation

Before we begin we better let Professor Phil Jones of CRU/UEA tell it like it is in one of those leaked emails that dropped out of the climategate scandal that quickly got dismissed as trite nonsense by all the usual suspects:

Shipping down in the southern hemisphere isn’t as thick on the ground (better make that water) as it is in the northern hemisphere for pretty obvious reasons, and so when it comes to sampling the temperature of the seas down near Antarctica we don’t stand much of a chance of getting any decent historic data. The issue is apparent for latitudes of 40° to 60° South let alone 60° to 90° South, so what data do we have and what story does it tell?

Masters of observed sea surface temperature (SST) either reside at the Hadley Centre, UK or the National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA. The former have data going back to 1850 (HadSST4) whilst the latter have data going back to 1662 (ICOADS). Both are gridded products in that you can select any oceanic region for study…