Seven years of oceanic and meteorological monitoring data have been collected in the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER domain from 2002-2009 in order to understand the spatial and temporal patterns of temperature and salinity across the domain. Empirical orthogonal function analysis shows that temperature changes with time are dominated by 1 principal component (explains 93% of the variability) which is strongly correlated with atmospheric fluxes. Salinity variability can be explained by 2 modes of which the first is dominated by river discharge (85.6% variability explained) throughout the domain and the second is correlated with sea surface height (8.7%). The 2nd mode, however, shows that the response in Sapelo and Doboy is out of phase with that of the Altamaha river implying that when sea surface height increases salinity decreases implying that Altamaha river water may be forced through the Intracoastal Waterway or other channels moving freshwater North or may recirculate back in through the Sounds from the ocean. Further investigation is needed to test this hypothesis.