SPACEPHOTOS

7 Apr 99 - The cold pool of water in the Pacific known as 'La Niña' is beginning to fade, but ocean conditions have not returned to normal. New imagery shows cooler temperatures and lower sea levels across the equatorial Pacific Ocean (seen in blue and purple in the center of the image) are diminishing, which indicates that the equatorial Pacific is slowly returning to normal. However, in the north and south Pacific Ocean, temperatures and sea level remain high (seen in red and white), a pattern that began many months ago. In a nutshell, this means that although La Niña is fading, heat distribution in the Pacific Ocean remains dramatically out of balance.