Ocean Warming Pattern Effect On Global And Regional Climate Change

Abstract

Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases cause the planet to warm, and the ocean uptake of anthropogenic heat slows the warming, preventing the climate system from equilibrating with the increasing radiative forcing. The uneven ocean surface warming affects regional changes in tropical rainfall, El Niño, and the global climate sensitivity. Thus, the study of ocean warming patterns bridges the ocean‐atmospheric dynamics community focusing on spatial patterns on one hand and the climate change community with a traditional emphasis on the planetary energy budget and radiative feedback on the other.The ocean surface warming pattern has emerged as a research frontier in climate science in relation to regional climate change and global climate sensitivity. In the high‐latitudes, observations have largely confirmed the interhemispheric asymmetry in ocean warming climate models predicted between the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean, a pattern resulting from the pole‐to‐pole deep ocean overturning circulation. In the tropics, the ocean warming pattern is closely coupled with atmospheric convection and circulation, modulating tropical cyclone statistics and El Niño influence in faraway regions such as western North America. While climate sensitivity is often considered a constant inherent to a given model, recent studies show that it varies in time as the heat exchange between the surface and deep oceans causes the ocean surface warming pattern to evolve. This warming pattern effect highlights the challenges in estimating climate sensitivity from instrumental observations, which feature evolving radiative forcing (greenhouse gases vs. aerosols) as well as unforced internal variability. Ocean surface warming is spatially variable The sea surface temperature pattern affects regional climate change The sea surface temperature pattern also has an effect on global climate sensitivity