2019•ScienceOpen access
Pantropical climate interactions
Wenju Cai, Lixin Wu, Matthieu Lengaigne, Tim Li, Shayne McGregor, Jong‐Seong Kug, Jin‐Yi Yu, Malte Fabian Stuecker, Agus Budi Santoso, Xichen Li, Yoo‐Geun Ham, Yoshimitsu Chikamoto, Benjamin Ng, Michael James McPhaden, Yan Du, Dietmar Dommenget, Fan Jia, Jules B. Kajtar, Noel Sebastian Keenlyside, Xiaopei Lin, Jing‐Jia Luo, Marta Martín‐Rey, Yohan Ruprich‐Robert, Guojian Wang, Shang‐Ping Xie, Yun Yang, Sarah M. Kang, Jun‐Young Choi, Bolan Gan, Geon-Il Kim, Chang-Eun Kim, Sun‐Young Kim, Jeong-Hwan Kim, Ping Chang
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Abstract
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which originates in the Pacific, is the strongest and most well-known mode of tropical climate variability. Its reach is global, and it can force climate variations of the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans by perturbing the global atmospheric circulation. Less appreciated is how the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans affect the Pacific. Especially noteworthy is the multidecadal Atlantic warming that began in the late 1990s, because recent research suggests that it has influenced Indo-Pacific climate, the character of the ENSO cycle, and the hiatus in global surface warming. Discovery of these pantropical interactions provides a pathway forward for improving predictions of climate variability in the current climate and for refining projections of future climate under different anthropogenic forcing scenarios.