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Origin of upper-ocean warming and El Niño change on decadal scales in the tropical Pacific Ocean

Nature volume 391, pages 879–883 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

The cause of decadal-scale variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean—such as that marked by the 1976–77 shift in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation1,2,3,4,5,6,7—is poorly understood. Unravelling the mechanism of the recent decade-long warming in the tropical upper ocean is a particularly important challenge, given the link to El Niño variability, but establishing the hypothesized interannual/decadal oceanic connections between middle latitudes and tropics has proved elusive8. Here we present observational evidence that Pacific upper-ocean warming and decadal changes in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation after 1976 may originate from decadal mid-latitude variability. In the middle 1970s the North Pacific Ocean is observed to have undergone a clear phase-transition; a ‘see-saw’ subsurface temperature anomaly pattern that rotates clockwise around the subtropical gyre. At middle latitudes a subsurface warm anomaly formed in the early 1970s from subducted surface-waters and penetrated through the subtropics and into the tropics, thus perturbing the tropical thermocline and driving the formation of a warm surface-water anomaly that may have influenced El Niño in the 1980s. The identification of this teleconnection of extratropical thermal anomalies to the tropics, through a subsurface ocean ‘bridge’, may enable improved prediction of decadal-scale climate variability.

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Figure 1: Horizontal distribution of ocean temperature anomalies averaged for four consecutive 3-year periods.
Figure 2: Meridional-depth sections of upper-ocean temperature anomalies (colour) and isopycnal surfaces (kg m−3; contour lines).
Figure 4: Ocean temperature variations with time from 1960 to 1990 at 250 m depth.
Figure 3: Upper ocean temperature anomalies as a function of depth and time in different locations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Levitus and other staff at the Ocean Climate Laboratory (NODC/NOAA) for their help and support in analysing observational data, and also thank M. Latif, Z. Liu, S. Tett, C. Deser, X.-Z. Liang and J. Picaut for comments. This work was supported by the NSF, NOAA and NASA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, 02882, Rhode Island, USA

    Rong-Hua Zhang & Lewis M. Rothstein

  2. Laboratory for Hydrospheric Process, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, 20771, Maryland, USA

    Antonio J. Busalacchi

Authors
  1. Rong-Hua Zhang
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  3. Antonio J. Busalacchi
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Correspondence to Rong-Hua Zhang.

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Zhang, RH., Rothstein, L. & Busalacchi, A. Origin of upper-ocean warming and El Niño change on decadal scales in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Nature 391, 879–883 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/36081

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