MCCIP ARC SCIENCE REVIEW 2010-11 TEMPERATURE (AIR AND SEA) 1 MCCIP ARC Science Review 2010-11 Temperature (Air and Sea)

• Main Authors: Sarah L Hughes, N. Penny Holliday, John Kennedy, David I Berry, Elizabeth C Kent, Toby Sherwin, Stephen Dye, Mark Inall, Theresa Shammon, Tim Smyth
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY; North Atlantic; North East Atlantic; Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.655.2846; http://www.mccip.org.uk/media/6784/mccip201011_temperature.pdf

Marine Air Temperatures in the Northeast Atlantic and UK waters have warmed rapidly over the last 25 years. The observed warming is greatest in the Southern North Sea with warming rates of over 0.6 °C decade-1. Similarly, sea-surface temperatures (SST) in UK coastal waters and in the north east Atlantic have risen by between 0.2 and 0.8˚C/decade since the 1980s. The most rapid increases have been observed in the Eastern English Channel (Region 3) and Southern North Sea (Region 2) at a rate between 0.6 and 0.8˚C/decade The temperature of the upper ocean (0-800m) to the west and north of the UK (Region 8) has been generally increasing since the 1970s. Superimposed on the underlying upward trend are decadal scale patterns of variability, fluctuating between relative maxima around 1960 and in the 2000s, with relative minima in the 1980s and 1990s. The observed temperature variability has been attributed to a combination of anthropogenic global climate change and natural variability (i.e. „internal ‟ variability in the ocean atmosphere system). The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is a pattern of variability in North Atlantic SST that is thought to be representative of the internal variability, the decadal scale variations