Data from: Connections between the Southern Ocean and the Eastern tropical Pacific in unforced and forced climate model simulations

• Main Authors: Zheng, Yiyu, Rugenstein, Maria, Alessi, Marc
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2024
• Subjects: Teleconnection; climate models; Atmosphere-ocean interaction; Feedback; Southern Ocean; Pacific
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.r4xgxd2nw

The sea surface temperature (SST) over the eastern tropical Pacific significantly influences global-mean climate feedback and may be driven in part by the SST over the Southern Ocean. Previous studies demonstrated a teleconnection from the Southern Ocean to the eastern tropical Pacific by perturbing the Southern Ocean climate. We investigate if this teleconnection holds in a fully coupled, freely running climate system using CMIP6 models. We assess the relationship between the Southern Ocean (SO) and the eastern tropical Pacific (SEP) by calculating correlations between SO and SEP SST timeseries within each model and regressions between mean SO and SEP SSTs across models. We show robust, positive SO-SEP relationships in an unforced climate using pre-industrial SSTs, in a forced climate using SST anomalies between pre-industrial and quadrupled CO 2 simulations, and in the SST pattern of the forced response relative to the global-mean SST anomaly. The strength of SO-SEP correlations is positively related to the stratocumulus cloud feedback off the west coast of South America, and negatively related to ocean heat uptake in the same region. As both shortwave cloud feedback and ocean heat uptake are underestimated in climate models, understanding their effects on SO-SEP teleconnections and their interactions is crucial for determining the strength of SO-SEP teleconnection in the real world and its trustworthiness in climate model projection. Funding provided by: National Aeronautics and Space Administration ROR ID: https://ror.org/027ka1x80 Award Number: 80NSSC21K1042 Funding provided by: National Science Foundation ROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62 Award Number: EAR-2202916 Funding provided by: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ROR ID: https://ror.org/02z5nhe81 Award Number: NA23OAR4310596 The original data for SST and for calculating the radiative restoration strength, shortwave cloud feedback, and ocean heat uptake are downloaded from https://aims2.llnl.gov/search. The original monthly data has ...