More Like this

1. ENSO-Unrelated Variability in Indo–Northwest Pacific Climate: Regional Coupled Ocean–Atmospheric Feedback

   https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0426.1  

   Wang, Chuan-Yang; Xie, Shang-Ping; Kosaka, Yu (May 2020, Journal of Climate)

   Abstract Regional ocean–atmospheric interactions in the summer tropical Indo–northwest Pacific region are investigated using a tropical Pacific Ocean–global atmosphere pacemaker experiment with a coupled ocean–atmospheric model (cPOGA) and a parallel atmosphere model simulation (aPOGA) forced with sea surface temperature (SST) variations from cPOGA. Whereas the ensemble mean features pronounced influences of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the ensemble spread represents internal variability unrelated to ENSO. By comparing the aPOGA and cPOGA, this study examines the effect of the ocean–atmosphere coupling on the ENSO-unrelated variability. In boreal summer, ocean–atmosphere coupling induces local positive feedback to enhance the variance and persistence of the sea level pressure and rainfall variability over the northwest Pacific and likewise induces local negative feedback to suppress the variance and persistence of the sea level pressure and rainfall variability over the north Indian Ocean. Anomalous surface heat fluxes induced by internal atmosphere variability cause SST to change, and SST anomalies feed back onto the atmosphere through atmospheric convection. The local feedback is sensitive to the background winds: positive under the mean easterlies and negative under the mean westerlies. In addition, north Indian Ocean SST anomalies reinforce the low-level anomalous circulation over the northwest Pacific through atmospheric Kelvin waves. This interbasin interaction, along with the local feedback, strengthens both the variance and persistence of atmospheric variability over the northwest Pacific. The response of the regional Indo–northwest Pacific mode to ENSO and influences on the Asian summer monsoon are discussed. 

   more » « less
2. Emergence of the Southeast Asian islands as a driver for Neogene cooling

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2011033117  

   Park, Yuem; Maffre, Pierre; Goddéris, Yves; Macdonald, Francis A.; Anttila, Eliel S. C.; Swanson-Hysell, Nicholas L. (September 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Steep topography, a tropical climate, and mafic lithologies contribute to efficient chemical weathering and carbon sequestration in the Southeast Asian islands. Ongoing arc–continent collision between the Sunda-Banda arc system and Australia has increased the area of subaerially exposed land in the region since the mid-Miocene. Concurrently, Earth’s climate has cooled since the Miocene Climatic Optimum, leading to growth of the Antarctic ice sheet and the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. We seek to evaluate the hypothesis that the emergence of the Southeast Asian islands played a significant role in driving this cooling trend through increasing global weatherability. To do so, we have compiled paleoshoreline data and incorporated them into GEOCLIM, which couples a global climate model to a silicate weathering model with spatially resolved lithology. We find that without the increase in area of the Southeast Asian islands over the Neogene, atmosphericpCO₂would have been significantly higher than preindustrial values, remaining above the levels necessary for initiating Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. 

   more » « less
3. Data from: The role of Southeast Asian island topography on Indo-Pacific climate and silicate weathering

   https://doi.org/10.6078/D1271P  

   Chiang, John; Maffre, Pierre (January 2023, Dryad)

   The modern configuration of the South East Asian Islands (SEAI) evolved over the last fifteen million years, as a result of subduction, arc magmatism, and arc-continent collisions, contributing to both increased land area and high topography.  The presence of the additional land area has been postulated to enhance convective rainfall, facilitating both increased silicate weathering and the development of the modern-day Walker circulation.  Using an Earth System Model in conjunction with a climate-silicate weathering model, we argue instead for a significant role of SEAI topography for both effects.  This dataset archives model output used in this investigation, including simulations using the Community Earth System Model version 1.2, and the climate-silicate weathering model GEOCLIM. All data are in Netcdf format, and were generated either by the Community Earth System Model 1.2 (Hurrell et al. 2013) or the climate-silicate weathering model GEOCLIM (Park et al. 2020).  Model output is organized into 4 tar files: 1) B1850C5.tar Contains model output for the fully coupled CESM1.2 runs, for 2D fields and for 3D pressure vertical velocity (W) between 10S-10N.  Monthly mean data for years 41-110 of the simulations.   Naming convention is No SEAI topography: B1850C5_noSEAItopo_y41-110.nc and B1850C5_noSEAItopo_W_y41-110.nc 50% SEAI topography: B1850C5_0.5SEAItopo_y41-110.nc and B1850C5_0.5SEAItopo_W_y41-110.nc 100% SEAI topography: B1850C5_y41-110.nc and B1850C5_W_y41-110.nc 150% SEAO topogaphy: B1850C5_1.5SEAItopo_y41-110.nc and B1850C5_1.5SEAItopo_W_y41-110.nc 2) E1850C5.tar Contains model output for the slab ocean CESM1.2 runs, for 2D fields and for 3D pressure vertical velocity (W) between 10S-10N.  Monthly mean data for years 21-50 of the simulations.  Naming convention is No SEAI topography: E1850C5_noSEAItopo_y21-50.nc and E1850C5_noSEAItopo_W_y21-50.nc 50% SEAI topography: E1850C5_0.5SEAItopo_y21-50.nc and E1850C5_0.5SEAItopo_W_y21-50.nc 100% SEAI topography: E1850C5_y21-50.nc and E1850C5_W_y21-50.nc 150% SEAO topogaphy:  E1850C5_1.5SEAItopo_y21-50.nc and E1850C5_1.5SEAItopo_W_y21-50.nc 3) GEOCLIM.tar Contains model output from the climate-silicate weathering model GEOCLIM.  Data is provided for all 573 parameter combinations.  All values are climatological annual means. All files contain these variables: GMST: global mean surface temperature (in K) atm_CO2_level: atmospheric pCO2 (in ppm) degassing: globally-integrated CO2 flux (in mol/yr) The files ending with 1xCO2.nc also contain these spatial fields: lithology fraction: fraction of land covered by a lithology class erosion: Regolith erosion rate (m/yr) weathering: Ca-Mg weathering rate (mol/m^2/yr) E1850C5_1xCO2.nc - GEOCLIM output using the Modern SEAI simulation as input, and for CO2 fixed to 286.7ppm.  E1850C5_noSEAI_1xCO2.nc - GEOCLIM output using the no SEAI simulation as input, and for CO2 fixed to 286.7ppm.  E1850C5_noSEAItopo_1xCO2.nc - GEOCLIM output using the flat SEAI simulation as input, and for CO2 fixed to 286.7ppm.  E1850C5_noSEAI_equil.nc - GEOCLIM output using the no SEAI simulation as input, and CO2 adjusted so that system is in carbon flux equilibrium.   E1850C5_noSEAItopo_flatSEAIslope_equil.nc - GEOCLIM output using the flat SEAI simulation as input, and CO2 adjusted so that system is in carbon flux equilibrium.   4) Surface.tar Contains land fraction and surface geopotential fields for the modern SEAI (Landfrac.nc) and no SEAI (Landfrac_noSEAI.nc) simulations References Hurrell, J.W., Holland, M.M., Gent, P.R., Ghan, S., Kay, J.E., Kushner, P.J., Lamarque, J.F., Large, W.G., Lawrence, D., Lindsay, K. and Lipscomb, W.H., 2013. The community earth system model: a framework for collaborative research. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 94(9), pp.1339-1360. Park, Y., Maffre, P., Goddéris, Y., Macdonald, F.A., Anttila, E.S. and Swanson-Hysell, N.L., 2020. Emergence of the Southeast Asian islands as a driver for Neogene cooling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(41), pp.25319-25326. 

   more » « less
4. Indo-Pacific Warming Induced by a Weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

   https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0346.1  

   Sun, Shantong; Thompson, Andrew F.; Xie, Shang-Ping; Long, Shang-Min (January 2022, Journal of Climate)

   Abstract The reorganization of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is often associated with changes in Earth’s climate. These AMOC changes are communicated to the Indo-Pacific basins via wave processes and induce an overturning circulation anomaly that opposes the Atlantic changes on decadal to centennial time scales. We examine the role of this transient, interbasin overturning response, driven by an AMOC weakening, both in an ocean-only model with idealized geometry and in a coupled CO 2 quadrupling experiment, in which the ocean warms on two distinct time scales: a fast decadal surface warming and a slow centennial subsurface warming. We show that the transient interbasin overturning produces a zonal heat redistribution between the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific basins. Following a weakened AMOC, an anomalous northward heat transport emerges in the Indo-Pacific, which substantially compensates for the Atlantic southward heat transport anomaly. This zonal heat redistribution manifests as a thermal interbasin seesaw between the high-latitude North Atlantic and the subsurface Indo-Pacific and helps to explain why Antarctic temperature records generally show more gradual changes than the Northern Hemisphere during the last glacial period. In the coupled CO 2 quadrupling experiment, we find that the interbasin heat transport due to a weakened AMOC contributes substantially to the slow centennial subsurface warming in the Indo-Pacific, accounting for more than half of the heat content increase and sea level rise. Thus, our results suggest that the transient interbasin overturning circulation is a key component of the global ocean heat budget in a changing climate. 

   more » « less
5. Transient Overturning Compensation between Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Basins

   https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0060.1  

   Sun, Shantong; Thompson, Andrew F.; Eisenman, Ian (August 2020, Journal of Physical Oceanography)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Climate models consistently project (i) a decline in the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and (ii) a strengthening of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing. These two processes suggest potentially conflicting tendencies of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC): a weakening AMOC due to changes in the North Atlantic but a strengthening AMOC due to changes in the Southern Ocean. Here we focus on the transient evolution of the global ocean overturning circulation in response to a perturbation to the NADW formation rate. We propose that the adjustment of the Indo-Pacific overturning circulation is a critical component in mediating AMOC changes. Using a hierarchy of ocean and climate models, we show that the Indo-Pacific overturning circulation provides the first response to AMOC changes through wave processes, whereas the Southern Ocean overturning circulation responds on longer (centennial to millennial) time scales that are determined by eddy diffusion processes. Changes in the Indo-Pacific overturning circulation compensate AMOC changes, which allows the Southern Ocean overturning circulation to evolve independently of the AMOC, at least over time scales up to many decades. In a warming climate, the Indo-Pacific develops an overturning circulation anomaly associated with the weakening AMOC that is characterized by a northward transport close to the surface and a southward transport in the deep ocean, which could effectively redistribute heat between the basins. Our results highlight the importance of interbasin exchange in the response of the global ocean overturning circulation to a changing climate. 

   more » « less