Origin of upper-ocean warming and El Niño change on decadal scales in the tropical Pacific Ocean

Rong-Hua Zhang (), Lewis M. Rothstein and Antonio J. Busalacchi
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Rong-Hua Zhang: Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island
Lewis M. Rothstein: Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island
Antonio J. Busalacchi: Laboratory for Hydrospheric Process, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Nature, 1998, vol. 391, issue 6670, 879-883

Abstract: Abstract The cause of decadal-scale variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean—such as that marked by the 1976–77 shift in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation1,2,3,4,5,6,7—is poorly understood. Unravelling the mechanism of the recent decade-long warming in the tropical upper ocean is a particularly important challenge, given the link to El Niño variability, but establishing the hypothesized interannual/decadal oceanic connections between middle latitudes and tropics has proved elusive8. Here we present observational evidence that Pacific upper-ocean warming and decadal changes in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation after 1976 may originate from decadal mid-latitude variability. In the middle 1970s the North Pacific Ocean is observed to have undergone a clear phase-transition; a ‘see-saw’ subsurface temperature anomaly pattern that rotates clockwise around the subtropical gyre. At middle latitudes a subsurface warm anomaly formed in the early 1970s from subducted surface-waters and penetrated through the subtropics and into the tropics, thus perturbing the tropical thermocline and driving the formation of a warm surface-water anomaly that may have influenced El Niño in the 1980s. The identification of this teleconnection of extratropical thermal anomalies to the tropics, through a subsurface ocean ‘bridge’, may enable improved prediction of decadal-scale climate variability.

Date: 1998
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DOI: 10.1038/36081

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