Combined effects of recent Pacific cooling and Indian Ocean warming on the Asian monsoon

Hiroaki Ueda (), Youichi Kamae, Masamitsu Hayasaki, Akio Kitoh, Shigeru Watanabe, Yurisa Miki and Atsuki Kumai
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Hiroaki Ueda: Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba
Youichi Kamae: Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies
Masamitsu Hayasaki: Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba
Akio Kitoh: Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba
Shigeru Watanabe: Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba
Yurisa Miki: Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba
Atsuki Kumai: Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Recent research indicates that the cooling trend in the tropical Pacific Ocean over the past 15 years underlies the contemporaneous hiatus in global mean temperature increase. During the hiatus, the tropical Pacific Ocean displays a La Niña-like cooling pattern while sea surface temperature (SST) in the Indian Ocean has continued to increase. This SST pattern differs from the well-known La Niña-induced basin-wide cooling across the Indian Ocean on the interannual timescale. Here, based on model experiments, we show that the SST pattern during the hiatus explains pronounced regional anomalies of rainfall in the Asian monsoon region and thermodynamic effects due to specific humidity change are secondary. Specifically, Indo-Pacific SST anomalies cause convection to intensify over the tropical western Pacific, which in turn suppresses rainfall in mid-latitude East Asia through atmospheric teleconnection. Overall, the tropical Pacific SST effect opposes and is greater than the Indian Ocean SST effect.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9854

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