Tropical and Antarctic sea ice impacts of observed Southern Ocean warming and cooling trends since 1949

Southern Ocean (SO) sea surface temperatures (SSTs) warmed from approximately 1949–1978 and cooled slightly from 1979–2013. We compare the remote impacts of these SO trends using historical coupled model experiments in which the model’s SO SST anomalies are nudged to observations. Compared to the co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NPJ climate and atmospheric science 2024-09, Vol.7 (1), p.197-9, Article 197
Main Authors: Zhang, Xiyue, Deser, Clara
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/106/694/1108
704/106/694/674
Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution
Atmospheric Sciences
Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Climatology
Cooling
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Evaporation
Feedback
Heat budget
Ocean temperature
Ocean warming
Remote control
Sea ice
Sea surface temperature
Statistical analysis
Time series
Trends
Tropical environments
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Summary:Southern Ocean (SO) sea surface temperatures (SSTs) warmed from approximately 1949–1978 and cooled slightly from 1979–2013. We compare the remote impacts of these SO trends using historical coupled model experiments in which the model’s SO SST anomalies are nudged to observations. Compared to the control (no nudging) ensemble, the nudged ensemble shows enhanced SST warming in the tropical southeast Pacific and Atlantic, and greater Antarctic sea ice loss, during the SO warming period: analogous to the impacts of SO cooling but of opposite sign. The SO-driven response in the tropical Pacific (Atlantic) is statistically significant when considering the trend difference between the two periods, and accounts for 34% (59%) of the observed non-radiatively forced trend. Surface heat budget analysis indicates wind-evaporation-SST feedback dominates over shortwave cloud feedback in amplifying the SO-driven SST trends in the tropics during the SO warming period, opposite to that for the SO cooling period.
ISSN:2397-3722
2397-3722
DOI:10.1038/s41612-024-00735-w