  We study the temporal correlations in the sea surface temperature (SST)
fluctuations around the seasonal mean values in the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans. We apply a method that systematically overcome possible trends in the
data. We find that the SST persistence, characterized by the correlation $C(s)$
of temperature fluctuations separated by a time period $s$, displays two
different regimes. In the short-time regime which extends up to roughly 10
months, the temperature fluctuations display a nonstationary behavior for both
oceans, while in the asymptotic regime it becomes stationary. The long term
correlations decay as $C(s) \sim s^{-\gamma}$ with $\gamma \sim 0.4$ for both
oceans which is different from $\gamma \sim 0.7$ found for atmospheric land
temperature.
