Anticorrelated multidecadal variations between surface and subsurface tropical North

[1] In this paper for the first time I show that the multidecadal variations of observed tropical North Atlantic (TNA) sea surface temperature (SST) are strongly anticorrelated with those of the observed TNA subsurface ocean temperature, with long-term trends removed. I further show that the anticor...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rong Zhang
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2007
Subjects:
has
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.143.7468
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/reference/bibliography/2007/roz0702.pdf
Description
Summary:[1] In this paper for the first time I show that the multidecadal variations of observed tropical North Atlantic (TNA) sea surface temperature (SST) are strongly anticorrelated with those of the observed TNA subsurface ocean temperature, with long-term trends removed. I further show that the anticorrelated change between the TNA surface and subsurface temperature is a distinctive signature of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variations, using water-hosing experiments with the GFDL state-of-art coupled climate model (CM2.1). External radiative forced simulations with the same model do not provide a significant relationship between the TNA surface and subsurface temperature variations. The observed detrended multidecadal TNA subsurface temperature anomaly may be taken as a proxy for the AMOC variability. Various mechanisms proposed for the multidecadal TNA SST variations, which are crucial for multidecadal variations of Atlantic hurricane activities, should take into account the observed anticorrelation between the TNA surface and subsurface temperature variations. Citation: Zhang, R. (2007), Anticorrelated multidecadal variations between surface and subsurface tropical North Atlantic, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34,L12713, doi:10.1029/2007GL030225. 1.