Sea surface temperature over the central and eastern equatorial Pacific has been increased slowly since early 2002 and the first El Niño event in the 21st century comes to its mature stage in November 2002.
The figure below shows monthly mean global sea surface temperature in November 2002 retrieved from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E), which is developed by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA).

AMSR-E is a sensor aboard NASA's Aqua satellite which was launched in May 2002. AMSR-E was developped based on the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) aboard ADEOS-II.
In ADEOS-II, AMSR observes global sea surface temperature and the combination of two sensors, AMSR and AMSR-E, will achieve more frequent observations of the same place a four times a day.

» See the details of image (AMSR/AMSR-E topics page)

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