The ocean plays a critical role in the climate system by transferring heat from the tropics toward the poles, helping to regulate regional climates. How this heat transport may change in the future remains a first order question in climate science.
This project will use output from a large ensemble of state-of-the-art climate models to examine changes to the Indian Ocean circulation and how it links to changes projected for the Pacific and Atlantic basins and surface winds.
It is hoped this proposed synthesis of two ENSO structures, their interaction with each other and how they respond to external forcing, will be the catalyst for future research and practical applications for forecasting and determining the impacts of present and future ENSO events.