With its own forms of underwater weather, the ocean has fronts and circulation patterns that move heat and nutrients around its basins. Changes near the surface often start with changes in the depths.
Most of India and Bangladesh are brown, showing that less rain fell than average during the week of July 14-20, when monsoon rains should have been falling.
Intense monsoon rain triggered destructive floods and landslides across Asia. This image shows unusually heavy rainfall over Pakistan, India, and parts of China during the first week of August 2010.
The cool water anomaly in the center of the image shows the lingering effect of the year-old La Niña. However, the much broader area of cooler-than-average water off the coast of North America from Alaska (top center) to the equator is a classic feature of the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).