Enhanced Decadal Climate Linkages Discovered between Western Australia and Tropical Pacific----Chinese Academy of Sciences

Home / Newsroom / Research News / Earth Sciences

Enhanced Decadal Climate Linkages Discovered between Western Australia and Tropical Pacific

Jun 05, 2024

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with collaborators, have uncovered significant interactions in sea surface temperature (SST) variations between the western Australian coast and the western-central tropical Pacific.

"Our results show a remarkable shift in climate dynamics, driven by external forces such as greenhouse gases and volcanic activities, which have intensified SST variabilities in these regions since 1985," said Prof. LIN Pengfei of IAP, corresponding author of the study, "our discovery helps explain the increasing frequency of marine heatwaves and coral bleaching events along the Western Australian coast."

In this study, the researchers used multiple observational datasets, pacemaker experiments based on FGOALS-f3-L and CESM1, and large ensemble simulations, building on previous work by the team. This comprehensive approach allowed the researchers to identify a crucial period starting in 1985, when external forcings began to significantly influence the tropical Indian Ocean, leading to profound decadal climate linkages with the western Australian coast and the western-central tropical Pacific.

These dynamics reveal that warm SST anomalies in the tropical Indian Ocean drive equatorial easterly wind anomalies, cooling the SST in the western-central tropical Pacific and enhancing the Indonesian Throughflow, which brings warmer water to the Western Australian coast.

In addition, these colder SSTs can induce cyclonic circulation in the Southeast Indian Ocean, amplifying warming effects off the Western Australian coast.

"Understanding these enhanced decadal linkages is critical for predicting future climate patterns and managing their impacts," said Prof. LIN.

Graduate student DING Yuewen, a co-author of the study, highlighted that the study also points to challenges in modeling these complex interactions, as current climate models often fail to accurately capture the incoherent warming patterns in different tropical ocean basins since the 1980s. This discrepancy underscores the need for improved models to better predict the regional and global impacts of these climate changes.

This study was conducted by a team of scientists from IAP, the University of Colorado, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the USA, and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

The researchers advocate for future advances in climate modeling to better represent the complex patterns of warming and their interactions with internal variability, such as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation using the FGOALS-g3 super-large ensembles. Improved predictions will be essential for managing the impacts of climate change in a warming world.