Indo-Pacific sea level variability during recent decades
Abstract
Decadal variability of sea level in the Indo-Pacific region is investigated using a historical OGCM simulation. The OGCM driven by the atmospheric forcing removing long-term trends clearly exhibits decadal sea level variability in the Pacific Ocean, which is associated with eastern tropical Pacific thermal anomalies. During the period of 1977-1987, the sea level anomalies are positive in the eastern equatorial Pacific and show deviations from a north-south symmetric distribution, with strongly negative anomalies in the western tropical South Pacific. During the period of 1996-2006, in contrast, the sea level anomalies are negative in the eastern equatorial Pacific and show a nearly north-south symmetric pattern, with positive anomalies in both hemispheres. Concurrently, sea level anomalies in the south-eastern Indian Ocean vary with those in the western tropical Pacific. These sea level variations are closely related to large-scale wind fields. Indo-Pacific sea level distributions are basically determined by wind anomalies over the equatorial region as well as wind stress curl anomalies over the off-equatorial region.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMOS13A1795Y
- Keywords:
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- 4215 Climate and interannual variability;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERALDE: 4522 ENSO;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICALDE: 4532 General circulation;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICALDE: 4556 Sea level: variations and mean;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL