Pan-tropical climate interactions — Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

Pan-tropical climate interactions (#5)

Wenju Cai 1 , Guojian Wang 1 , Agus Santoso 2 , Lixin Wu 3 , Benjamin Ng 1 , Michael J. McPhaden 4
  1. CSIRO, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. UNSW, Sydney
  3. QNLM, Qingdao
  4. NOAA, Washington

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which originates in the Pacific, is the strongest and most well-known mode of tropical climate variability. Its reach is global and it can force climate variations of the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans by perturbing the global atmospheric circulation. Less appreciated is how the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans affect the Pacific. Especially noteworthy is  the multi-decadal Atlantic warming that began in the late 1990s, as recent research suggests that it has influenced Indo-Pacific climate, the character of the ENSO cycle, and the hiatus in global surface warming. Discovery of these pan-tropical interactions provides a pathway forward for improving predictions of climate variability in the current climate, and for refining projections of future climate under different anthropogenic forcing scenarios.

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