Atlantic Impacts on the Tropical Pacific Climate in the 2000s
Abstract
A subdecadal (i.e., 3-year-running means) variation over the tropical Pacific is very distinctively observed in the 2000s and it can work to modulate the predictive skills at a lead time of several years. Here, we have demonstrated that sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the equatorial and north tropical Atlantic Oceans contribute to forming high ocean temperature anomalies of the tropical Pacific in the early-2000s, by performing partial data assimilation of global climate model. Low SST over the equatorial Atlantic modifies the Walker circulation and the associated weakening of the Pacific trade wind raises the equatorial SST. At the same time, high SST anomaly is generated also in the off-equatorial North Pacific through deepening of the upper ocean thermocline due to an accompanying anti-cyclonic surface wind anomaly aloft. In addition, the north tropical Atlantic SST may help the subdecadal warming, through similar changes working as a seasonal trigger of the so-called central Pacific El Nino Southern Oscillation event.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMOS23A..05M
- Keywords:
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- 3305 Climate change and variability;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 1620 Climate dynamics;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4321 Climate impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4504 Air/sea interactions;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL