Increased Indian Ocean-North Atlantic Ocean warming chain under greenhouse warming

Over the past half a century, both the Indian Ocean (IO) and the North Atlantic Ocean (NA) exhibit strong warming trends like a global mean surface temperature (SST). Here, we show that not only simply as a result of increased greenhouse gases, but the IO-NA interaction through atmospheric teleconne...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature Communications
Main Authors: Yang, Young-Min, Park, Jae-Heung, An, Soon-Il, Yeh, Sang-Wook, Zhu, Zhiwei, Liu, Fei, Li, Juan, Lee, June-Yi, Wang, Bin
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Subjects:
Article
Indian
Pacific
North Atlantic
Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9270466/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35803937
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31676-8
Description
Summary:Over the past half a century, both the Indian Ocean (IO) and the North Atlantic Ocean (NA) exhibit strong warming trends like a global mean surface temperature (SST). Here, we show that not only simply as a result of increased greenhouse gases, but the IO-NA interaction through atmospheric teleconnection boosts up their warming trends. Climate model simulations demonstrate that the IO warming increases the NA SST by enhancing the longwave radiation through atmospheric teleconnection, subsequently, the warmer NA SST-induced atmospheric teleconnection leads to IO warming by reducing evaporative cooling with weakened surface winds. This two-way interaction (i.e., IO-NA warming chain) acts as positive feedback that reinforces warming over both ocean basins. The Pacific Ocean is partly involved in this warming chain as a modulator in an interdecadal timescale. These results highlight the importance of understanding ocean-basin interactions that may provide a more accurate future projection of warming.

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