TY - JOUR
T1 - Potential tropical Atlantic impacts on Pacific decadal climate trends
AU - Chikamoto, Y.
AU - Mochizuki, T.
AU - Timmermann, A.
AU - Kimoto, M.
AU - Watanabe, M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, through the Program for Risk Information on Climate Change. The simulations were performed with the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. HadCRUT4, HadSLP2r/ERSST, and ERA-Interim data sets are provided by Met Office Hadley Centre, the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/, and ECMWF, respectively. The data in assimilation experiments are available from the authors upon request for research purpose. The manuscript benefited from the constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers. A.T. and Y.C. were supported by NSF (1049219).
Publisher Copyright:
©2016. The Authors.
PY - 2016/7/16
Y1 - 2016/7/16
N2 - The tropical Pacific cooling from the early 1990s to 2013 has contributed to the slowdown of globally averaged sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The origin of this regional cooling trend still remains elusive. Here we demonstrate that the remote impact of Atlantic SST anomalies, as well as local atmosphere-ocean interactions, contributed to the eastern Pacific cooling during this period. By assimilating observed three-dimensional Atlantic temperature and salinity anomalies into a coupled general circulation model, we are able to qualitatively reproduce the observed Pacific decadal trends of SST and sea level pressure (SLP), albeit with reduced amplitude. Although a major part of the Pacific SLP trend can be explained by equatorial Pacific SST forcing only, the origin of this low-frequency variability can be traced back further to the remote impacts of equatorial Atlantic and South Atlantic SST trends. Atlantic SST impacts on the atmospheric circulation can also be detected for the Northeastern Pacific, thus providing a linkage between Atlantic climate and Western North American drought conditions.
AB - The tropical Pacific cooling from the early 1990s to 2013 has contributed to the slowdown of globally averaged sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The origin of this regional cooling trend still remains elusive. Here we demonstrate that the remote impact of Atlantic SST anomalies, as well as local atmosphere-ocean interactions, contributed to the eastern Pacific cooling during this period. By assimilating observed three-dimensional Atlantic temperature and salinity anomalies into a coupled general circulation model, we are able to qualitatively reproduce the observed Pacific decadal trends of SST and sea level pressure (SLP), albeit with reduced amplitude. Although a major part of the Pacific SLP trend can be explained by equatorial Pacific SST forcing only, the origin of this low-frequency variability can be traced back further to the remote impacts of equatorial Atlantic and South Atlantic SST trends. Atlantic SST impacts on the atmospheric circulation can also be detected for the Northeastern Pacific, thus providing a linkage between Atlantic climate and Western North American drought conditions.
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U2 - 10.1002/2016GL069544
DO - 10.1002/2016GL069544
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84978115978
VL - 43
SP - 7143
EP - 7151
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
SN - 0094-8276
IS - 13
ER -
