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Dissimilar characteristics associated with the 1976/1977 and 1998/1999 climate regime shifts in the North Pacific

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Abstract

We examined dissimilar characteristics associated with the North Pacific mean sea surface temperature (SST) regime shifts across 1976/1977 and 1998/1999. The SST spatial pattern across 1976/1977 was more similar to that of a Pacific Decadal Oscillation compared with that across 1998/1999. Across the 1976/1977 regime shift, the wind stress curl forcing before 1976/1977 was not balanced with meridional oceanic currents after 1976/1977, indicating that the oceanic dynamic adjustment due to basin-scale anomalous wind forcing in the North Pacific played a minor role in the 1976/1977 climate regime shift. However, the atmospheric forcing significantly contributed to the SST condition after the 1976/1977 regime shift. On the other hand, both oceanic dynamic adjustment and atmospheric wind forcing played key roles in the 1998/1999 North Pacific regime shift. We infer that the leading mechanisms associated with the North Pacific SST regime shift depend on the change of mean SST over the tropical Pacific.

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Acknowledgements

This work is sponsored by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant KMI2018-03210.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Sciences and Convergence Technology, Hanyang University, Ansan, South Korea

    Se-Yong Song & Sang-Wook Yeh

  2. Department of Ocean Sciences, Inha University, Incheon, South Korea

    Jae-Hun Park

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  1. Se-Yong Song
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  2. Sang-Wook Yeh
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  3. Jae-Hun Park
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Correspondence to Sang-Wook Yeh.

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Song, SY., Yeh, SW. & Park, JH. Dissimilar characteristics associated with the 1976/1977 and 1998/1999 climate regime shifts in the North Pacific. Theor Appl Climatol 142, 1463–1470 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03378-y

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