SST means "Sea Surface Temperature"

Due (click here) to a significant warming trend in the Niño-3.4 region since 1950, El Niño and La Niña episodes that are defined by a single fixed 30-year base period (e.g. 1971-2000) are increasingly incorporating longer-term trends that do not reflect interannual ENSO variability. In order to remove this warming trend, CPC is adopting a new strategy to update the base period.

There will be multiple centered 30-year base periods that will be used to define the Oceanic Niño index (as a departure from average or "anomaly"). These 30-year base periods will be used to calculate the anomalies for successive 5-year periods in the historical record:...

Understand how these El Ninos are due to HOT WATER? You got that part? This is a Pacific Ocean phenomena.

Long about now I would be asking myself, "Self, what causes the Pacific Ocean to be so warm it spawns an El Nino?"

Hm? 

My best guess is typhoons are Earth's physics that remove heat from the troposphere into the Pacific Ocean.

This is the East Pacific storm tracks from 2016.

Twenty-one so far this year with two Cat Four storms.

By the end of the 2015 storm year on December 31st, there were thrity-one storms with nine Cat Four and one Cat Five storm. The final storm of 2015 spawned on December 31st as a tropical storm and only lasted one day in duration.

This is the East Pacific storms of 1949. There were six storms that year. 

Back in the day, the storms were numbered and not named as below. There were four tropical storms and two Cat One storms. 

The season began June 11th and ended September 30th. 

Interesting, isn't it?

But, there must have been so many more in the Atlantic Ocean, right?

Sixteen. There were sixteen numbered storms in 1949 in the Atlantic Ocean. Three Cat One storms, two Cat Two storms, one Cat Three storms and one Cat Four storms. There were no Cat Five storms.

The Atlantic hurricane season in 1949 started August 21st after the sun has begun it's traverse to the southern hemisphere again. The season ended November 5th, shortly after the end of the official season.

Do you know there hasn't been a Cat Two storm in in the past two years. The most recent Cat Two storm was 2014. Then not again until 2012 of which there were three.

But, the Atlantic Ocean hurricane records go all the way back to 1851 of which there were six numbered storms. The storms were from June 25th to October 19th.

"Tropical Cyclones of the North Atlantic Ocean, 1851-2006" (click here)

The record year for hurricanes was 2005, the year of Katrina. (click here)