Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus

Abstract

O bservations of global average surface air temperature (SAT) show an unequivocal warming over the twentieth century 1 , however the overall trend has been interrupted by periods of weak warming or even cooling (Fig. 1). For example, warming largely stalled from the 1940s to the 1970s. Between 1975 and 2000 the overall upward SAT trend resumed, but it was not uniform, with a decade of accelerated warming from about 1975-1985 (ref. 2), as well as periods of little warming 3 . Since around 2001 a marked hiatus in global surface warming has occurred, raising questions about its cause, its likely duration and the implications for global climate change.Decadal periods of minimal warming, or even cooling, interspersing decades of rapid warming, are not inconsistent with a long-term warming trend; indeed this characterizes the interplay between steadily increasing greenhouse gas forcing and internally generated climate variability. Factors other than internal variability, such as volcanoes and changes in solar radiation, can also drive cooler decades against the backdrop of ongoing warming. Indeed, hiatus decades are expected to punctuate future warming trends, even under scenarios of rapid global warming 4,5 . Mechanisms proposed to explain the most recent observed hiatus include increased ocean heat uptake 2,3,6,7 , the prolonged solar minimum 4 and changes in atmospheric water vapour 8 and aerosols 9,10 . The cool surface waters of the eastern Pacific have also been linked to the global temperature hiatus 11 and consensus is building that the subsurface ocean, with its vast capacity for heat storage, is playing a significant role through enhanced heat uptake 2,3,7,12,13 . It remains unclear, however, where the bulk of anomalous ocean heat uptake has occurred, with the Pacific 2,3 , Atlantic 13,14 and Southern [14][15][16][17] Oceans all potential candidates. One notable aspect of the two most recent extended hiatus periods (1940-1975 and 2001-present), in contrast to periods of global SAT warming (1910SAT warming ( -1940SAT warming ( and 1976SAT warming ( -2000, is that they correspond closely to periods when the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation 18-20 (IPO) has been in a negative phase (Fig. 1a). The IPO manifests as a low-frequency El Niño-like pattern of climate variability, with a warm tropical Pacific and weakened trade winds during its positive phase, and a cool tropical Pacific and strengthened winds during its negative phase. Recent analyses of climate model simulations suggest that hiatus decades are linked to negative phases of the IPO (refs 2,3,11). Here we examine the most recent hiatus in this context, particularly in relation to altered ocean dynamics and enhanced ocean heat uptake, and assess implications for the coming decades.To examine the ongoing hiatus compared with a period of warming, we start by considering climatic trends over the past two decades, spanning the transition from a period of global surface warming in the 1990s to the post-2000 hiatus. During this time the Pacific trade winds ...

Decreased Response Contrast of Hadley Circulation to the Equatorially Asymmetric and Symmetric Tropical SST Structures during the Recent Hiatus

“…Since the ascending and descending of the HC to SST prior to and during the hiatus in the last decade, two periods (i.e., 1979−1998 and 1999−2015) are considered. The demarcation, 1998, corresponds exactly to a transition (i.e., turned strengthened linear trend into decreased trend) in the strength of the HC (Guo 2016) and temperature (England et al 2014;Xing et al 2016). …”

“…For instance, the contribution from sulfate aerosols (e.g. Booth et al 2012), the North Atlantic Oscillation , the eastern Pacific SST (Kosaka and Xie 2013), Pacific trade winds (England et al 2014), the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (Dai et al 2015), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (Trenberth and Fasullo 2013). Irrespective of the cause of the hiatus in the past decades, the changes in the temperature may alter the meridional distribution of SST (Adam et al 2014), which may affect the HC in turn.…”

Multidecadal-scale adjustment of the ocean mixed layer heat budget in the tropics: examining ocean reanalyses

“…The reduced heat flux from the ocean to the atmosphere over the cooler SSTs has been related to a slowing of the global warming signal in the early twentyfirst century (Kosaka and Xie 2013;Drijfhout et al 2014;Chen and Tung 2014;England et al 2014;Nieves et al 2015), and with the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO; Meehl et al 2013;Dong and Zhou 2014). Palmer et al (2015) compare ocean heat content linear trends in 4 ocean reanalyses with output available back to 1970.…”

Evaluating SODA for Indo-Pacific Ocean decadal climate variability studies

“…England et al [2014] Based on our analysis and evaluation here, we find SODA to be a useful tool for investigating regional to large scale upper ocean decadal to multidecadal variability in temperature and sea level (quasisteric component of sea level). SODA reproduces the decadal sea surface height signals observed in long-term tide gauges at key locations for examining large scale ocean climate variability (Midway Island and Fremantle) while also characterizing the IPO through the vertical temperature structure for possible studies of IPO ocean dynamics.…”