Eight Centuries of North Atlantic Ocean Atmosphere Variability

Climate in the tropical North Atlantic is controlled largely by variations in the strength of the trade winds, the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and sea surface temperatures. A high-resolution study of Caribbean sediments provides a subdecadally resolved record of tropical upwellin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Black, David E., Peterson, Larry C., Overpeck, Jonathan T., Kaplan, Alexey, Evans, Michael N., Kashgarian, Michaele
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 1999
Subjects:
Multidisciplinary
North Atlantic
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.286.5445.1709
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.286.5445.1709
Description
Summary:Climate in the tropical North Atlantic is controlled largely by variations in the strength of the trade winds, the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and sea surface temperatures. A high-resolution study of Caribbean sediments provides a subdecadally resolved record of tropical upwelling and trade wind variability spanning the past 825 years. These results confirm the importance of a decadal (12- to 13-year) mode of Atlantic variability believed to be driven by coupled tropical ocean-atmosphere dynamics. Although a well-defined interdecadal mode of variability does not appear to be characteristic of the tropical Atlantic, there is evidence that century-scale variability is substantial. The tropical Atlantic may also have been involved in a major shift in Northern Hemisphere climate variability that took place about 700 years ago.

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