The role of ocean dynamics in producing decadal climate variability in the North Pacific |
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Authors: | D W Pierce T P Barnett N Schneider R Saravanan D Dommenget M Latif |
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Institution: | (1) Climate Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, USA E-mail: dpierce@ucsd.edu, US;(2) National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA, US;(3) Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, DE |
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Abstract: | Decadal time scale climate variability in the North Pacific has implications for climate both locally and over North America.
A crucial question is the degree to which this variability arises from coupled ocean/atmosphere interactions over the North
Pacific that involve ocean dynamics, as opposed to either purely thermodynamic effects of the oceanic mixed layer integrating
in situ the stochastic atmospheric forcing, or the teleconnected response to tropical variability. The part of the variability
that is coming from local coupled ocean/atmosphere interactions involving ocean dynamics is potentially predictable by an
ocean/atmosphere general circulation model (O/A GCM), and such predictions could (depending on the achievable lead time) have
distinct societal benefits. This question is examined using the results of fully coupled O/A GCMs, as well as targeted numerical
experiments with stand-alone ocean and atmosphere models individually. It is found that coupled ocean/atmosphere interactions
that involve ocean dynamics are important to determining the strength and frequency of a decadal-time scale peak in the spectra
of several oceanic variables in the Kuroshio extension region off Japan. Local stochastic atmospheric heat flux forcing, integrated
by the oceanic mixed layer into a red spectrum, provides a noise background from which the signal must be extracted. Although
teleconnected ENSO responses influence the North Pacific in the 2–7 years/cycle frequency band, it is shown that some decadal-time
scale processes in the North Pacific proceed without ENSO. Likewise, although the effects of stochastic atmospheric forcing
on ocean dynamics are discernible, a feedback path from the ocean to the atmosphere is suggested by the results.
Received: 23 January 2000 / Accepted: 10 January 2001 |
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