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The tropical Pacific warming pattern since the 1950s exhibits two warming centers in the western Pacific (WP) and eastern Pacific (EP), encompassing an equatorial central Pacific (CP) cooling and a hemispheric asymmetry in the subtropical EP. The underlying mechanisms of this warming pattern remain debated. Here, we conduct ocean heat decompositions of two coupled model large ensembles to unfold the role of wind-driven ocean circulation. When wind changes are suppressed, historical radiative forcing induces a subtropical northeastern Pacific warming, thus causing a hemispheric asymmetry that extends toward the tropical WP. The tropical EP warming is instead induced by the cross-equatorial winds associated with the hemispheric asymmetry, and its driving mechanism is southward warm Ekman advection due to the off-equatorial westerly wind anomalies around 5°N, not vertical thermocline adjustment. Climate models fail to capture the observed CP cooling, suggesting an urgent need to better simulate equatorial oceanic processes and thermal structures.

 

Most state-of-art models project a reduced equatorial Pacific east-west temperature gradient and a weakened Walker circulation under global warming. However, the causes of this robust projection remain elusive. Here, we devise a series of slab ocean model experiments to diagnostically decompose the global warming response into the contributions from the direct carbon dioxide (CO₂) forcing, sea ice changes, and regional ocean heat uptake. The CO₂forcing dominates the Walker circulation slowdown through enhancing the tropical tropospheric stability. Antarctic sea ice changes and local ocean heat release are the dominant drivers for reduced zonal temperature gradient over the equatorial Pacific, while the Southern Ocean heat uptake opposes this change. Corroborating our model experiments, multimodel analysis shows that the models with greater Southern Ocean heat uptake exhibit less reduction in the temperature gradient and less weakening of the Walker circulation. Therefore, constraining the tropical Pacific projection requires a better insight into Southern Ocean processes.

 

Mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate change depend on accurate climate projections for the coming decades. While changes in radiative heat fluxes are known to contribute to surface warming, changes to ocean circulation can also impact the rate of surface warming. Previous studies suggest that projected changes to ocean circulation reduce the rate of global warming. However, these studies consider large greenhouse gas forcing scenarios, which induce a significant buoyancy‐driven decline of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Here, we use a climate model to quantify the previously unknown impact of changes to wind‐driven ocean circulation on global surface warming. Wind‐driven ocean circulation changes amplify the externally forced warming rate by 17% from 1979 to 2014. Accurately simulating changes to the atmospheric circulation is key to improving near‐term climate projections.

 

Over the past century, the subpolar North Atlantic experienced slight cooling or suppressed warming, relative to the background positive temperature trends, often dubbed the North Atlantic warming hole (NAWH). The causes of the NAWH remain under debate. Here we conduct coupled ocean-atmosphere simulations to demonstrate that enhanced Indian Ocean warming, another salient feature of global warming, could increase local rainfall and through teleconnections strengthen surface westerly winds south of Greenland, cooling the subpolar North Atlantic. In decades to follow however, this cooling effect would gradually vanish as the Indian Ocean warming acts to strengthen the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). We argue that the historical NAWH can potentially be explained by such atmospheric mechanisms reliant on surface wind changes, while oceanic mechanisms related to AMOC changes become more important on longer timescales. Thus, explaining the North Atlantic temperature trends and particularly the NAWH requires considering both atmospheric and oceanic mechanisms.

 

This study investigates the formation mechanism of the ocean surface warming pattern in response to a doubling CO₂with a focus on the role of ocean heat uptake (or ocean surface heat flux change, ΔQ_net). We demonstrate that thetransientpatterns of surface warming and rainfall change simulated by the dynamic ocean–atmosphere coupled model (DOM) can be reproduced by theequilibriumsolutions of the slab ocean–atmosphere coupled model (SOM) simulations when forced with the DOM ΔQ_netdistribution. The SOM is then used as a diagnostic inverse modeling tool to decompose the CO₂-induced thermodynamic warming effect and the ΔQ_net(ocean heat uptake)–induced cooling effect. As ΔQ_netis largely positive (i.e., downward into the ocean) in the subpolar oceans and weakly negative at the equator, its cooling effect is strongly polar amplified and opposes the CO₂warming, reducing the net warming response especially over Antarctica. For the same reason, the ΔQ_net-induced cooling effect contributes significantly to the equatorially enhanced warming in all three ocean basins, while the CO₂warming effect plays a role in the equatorial warming of the eastern Pacific. The spatially varying component of ΔQ_net, although globally averaged to zero, can effectively rectify and lead to decreased global mean surface temperature of a comparable magnitude as the global mean ΔQ_neteffect under transient climate change. Our study highlights the importance of air–sea interaction in the surface warming pattern formation and the key role of ocean heat uptake pattern.

 

While the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is projected to slow down under anthropogenic warming, the exact role of the AMOC in future climate change has not been fully quantified. Here, we present a method to stabilize the AMOC intensity in anthropogenic warming experiments by removing fresh water from the subpolar North Atlantic. This method enables us to isolate the AMOC climatic impacts in experiments with a full-physics climate model. Our results show that a weakened AMOC can explain ocean cooling south of Greenland that resembles the North Atlantic warming hole and a reduced Arctic sea ice loss in all seasons with a delay of about 6 years in the emergence of an ice-free Arctic in boreal summer. In the troposphere, a weakened AMOC causes an anomalous cooling band stretching from the lower levels in high latitudes to the upper levels in the tropics and displaces the Northern Hemisphere midlatitude jets poleward. 

Abstract The influence of eastern tropical Pacific (EPAC; 10°S–10°N, 140°–80°W) wind anomalies on El Niño is investigated using observations and model experiments. Extreme and moderate El Niños exhibit contrasting anomalous wind patterns in the EPAC during the peak and decay phases: westerly wind anomalies during extreme El Niño and southeasterly (southwesterly) wind anomalies south (north) of the equator during moderate El Niño. Experiments with an ocean general circulation model indicate that for extreme El Niño, the eastward intrusion of westerly wind anomalies contributes to the prolonged positive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the eastern equatorial Pacific throughout boreal spring by weakened upwelling and horizontal advection. For moderate El Niño, by contrast, both the meridional and zonal anomalous winds over the EPAC are important in the rapid (slow) SST cooling south (north) of the equator through advection and wind–evaporation–SST feedback. Atmospheric model experiments confirm that these EPAC anomalous winds are primarily forced by tropical SST anomalies. The interplay between wind and SST anomalies suggests positive air–sea feedbacks over EPAC during the decay phase of El Niño. Ocean model results show that the frequency of extreme El Niño increases when EPAC wind anomalies are removed, suggesting the importance of EPAC winds for El Niño diversity.