|
|||||
|
|
Relative importance of wind and buoyancy forcing for interdecadal regime shifts in the Pacific Ocean |
|
| Authors: | |
| Institution: | 1. Laboratory of Tropical Marine Environmental Dynamics, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510301, China 2. International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7340, USA 3. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA |
| Abstract: | Miami Isopycnal Coordinate Ocean Model (MICOM) is applied here to simulate the interdecadal climatic change in the Pacific Ocean. The surface forcing functions from January 1945 through to December 1993 are derived from the Comprehensive Ocean and Atmospheric Data Set (COADS). Such a numerical experiment reproduces the observed basin-wide evolution for the interdecadal variability of the heat content in the upper 400 m layers. The teleconnections between the central North Pacific, the Gulf of Alaska, and the eastern and western tropical Pacific Oceans are captured very well. Two additional experiments are performed to investigate the rela-tive importance of anomalous wind and buoyancy forcing regarding the regime shift. The results show that the anomalous buoyancy forcing is the dominant factor in the North Pacific and the sub-tropics, whereas the anomalous wind forcing is more important in the tropical Pacific than the other factors. Subduction is intrinsic physics for the interdecadal variability in the midlatitudes and the northern subtropics, whereas other mechanisms are involved in the tropical Pacific. |
| Keywords: | Pacific Ocean regime shift relative importance buoyancy forcing |
| 本文献已被 万方数据 SpringerLink 等数据库收录！ | |