Initialized decadal prediction for transition to positive phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27251760.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms11718 and PMC identifier 4895720.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), a dominant mode of multi-decadal variability of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Pacific, contributed to the reduced rate of global surface temperature warming in the early 2000s. A proposed mechanism for IPO multidecadal variability indicates that the presence of decadal timescale upper ocean heat content in the off-equatorial western tropical Pacific can provide conditions for an interannual El Niño/Southern Oscillation event to trigger a transition of tropical Pacific SSTs to the opposite IPO phase. Here we show that a decadal prediction initialized in 2013 simulates predicted Niño3.4 SSTs that have qualitatively tracked the observations through 2015. The year three to seven average prediction (2015-2019) from the 2013 initial state shows a transition to the positive phase of the IPO from the previous negative phase and a resumption of larger rates of global warming over the 2013-2022 period consistent with a positive IPO phase.