Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus
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Title:
Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus
Series Title:
Nature Climate Change
Creator:
Matthew H. England
Shayne McGregor
Paul Spence
Gerald A. Meehl
Axel Timmermann
Wenju Cai
Alex Sen Gupta
Michael J. McPhaden
Ariaan Purich
Agus Santoso
Publisher:
Macmillan Publishers Limited
Publication Date:
Language:
English

Notes

Abstract:
Despite ongoing increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the Earth’s global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this slowdown in surface warming. A key component of the global hiatus that has been identified is cool eastern Pacific sea surface temperature, but it is unclear how the ocean has remained relatively cool there in spite of ongoing increases in radiative forcing. Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake. The extra uptake has come about through increased subduction in the Pacific shallow overturning cells, enhancing heat convergence in the equatorial thermocline. At the same time, the accelerated trade winds have increased equatorial upwelling in the central and eastern Pacific, lowering sea surface temperature there, which drives further cooling in other regions. The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1–0.2

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Florida International University
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