Annual Sea Surface Temperature in the Gulf of Maine

2016 was an unusually warm summer, especially in the months leading up to the beginning of the puffin nesting season. Sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Gulf of Maine were well above the average in this data set that began in 1982. In this graph, the black line is the average SST since 1982, gray is variation around the average and red is actual SST from July 2015 through June 2016. (Source: NOAA)