Using model simulations of the movement of tuna distributions across the tropical Pacific subject to projected ocean changes, the researchers found that without strong mitigation efforts, tuna distributions are likely to shift away from island fishing zones.
Maximum temperatures in Australia during spring have exceeded historic records on multiple occasions in recent years. Understanding what drives these high temperatures may lead to better forecasts of extreme heat in the future.
An international team of authors led by NCAR scientist and CLEX PI Jerry Meehl, along with CLEX CIs and AIs, propose that the Pacific and Atlantic ocean basins are mutually interactive, with each basin influencing and responding to processes in the other basin.
It has been remarkable how much we have achieved in this extraordinarily difficult year. Research coming out of the Teleconnections and Variability program over the past four months has strongly focused on how influences in one part of the world can have direct impacts on another.
Using atmospheric model experiments, researchers have shown that the warming of the tropical Indian Ocean relative to the other two tropical ocean basins can effectively control Walker Circulation changes in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and influence climate far beyond the Indian Ocean region.
As a La Niña event intensifies in the Pacific, bringing increased rain to parts of Australia and a powerful hurricane season to the Tropical Atlantic, a new book reveals the dynamics and impacts of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the irregular cycle that switches the Pacific Ocean between these cool La Niña and warm El Niño events.
CLEX researchers evaluate the performance of satellite chlorophyll observations in the tropical Pacific Ocean and suggest algorithm improvements.
Solar heating of surface waters in the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans, along with turbulent mixing that moves this heat into the colder deep-reaching Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, play a crucial role in shaping oceanic heat transport pathways
Antarctic sea ice had been growing in area since 1979, despite the influence of global warming. Then unexpectedly in the austral spring of 2016, there was a rapid decline. CLEX researchers used multiple runs of a coupled ocean-atmosphere climate model to investigate whether these distant influences played a role and, if so, the level of the contribution to the sea-ice decline.
Marine heatwaves are becoming longer and more frequent. A global assessment of marine heatwaves has concluded that they have “the capacity to restructure entire ecosystems and disrupt the provision of ecological goods and services in the coming decades".