Journal of Tropical Oceanography ›› 2015, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (3): 1-12.doi: 10.11978/j.issn.1009-5470.2015.03.001CSTR: 32234.14.j.issn.1009-5470.2015.03.001

• Marine Hydrography •     Next Articles

Analysis of non-uniform sea surface temperature warming over the tropical oceans and its causes based on CMIP5 data

DU Mei-fang1, 2, XU Hai-ming1, ZHOU Chao3   

  1. 1. Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disaster and Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster of Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China; 2. Dongtai Meteorological Bureau, Yancheng 224200, China; 3. Lüsi National Reference Climatological Station, Qidong 226241, China
  • Received:2014-05-30 Revised:2014-10-25 Online:2015-06-08 Published:2015-06-08

Abstract: Using the global monthly mean datasets from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), the characteristics of non-uniform sea surface temperature warming over the tropical Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans and its causes are analyzed. We use various meteorological statistical methods, such as synthetic analysis and correlation analysis. Multi-model results show that annual mean spatial distributions of the variation in SST exhibit non-uniform patterns over the three tropical oceans under global warming. However, the causes responsible for these non-uniform patterns are quite different. The oceanic dynamic processes play a leading role in the equator and over the area north of the equator in the tropical Pacific Ocean, while the atmospheric thermal effect becomes more important over the area south of the equator. In addition, the oceanic upwelling/downwelling processes play different roles in the eastern and western tropical Pacific. For most part of the tropical Indian Ocean, variation in sea surface temperature is not well explained by the air-sea heat fluxes and oceanic dynamics such as upwelling/downwelling, and temperature advection also plays an important role. For the tropical Atlantic Ocean, the SST variability in the area near the equator mainly results from oceanic dynamics such as temperature advection and upwelling/downwelling. Temperature advection plays a leading role in the variation of sea surface temperature north of the equator, while upwelling/downwelling plays a dominant role south of the equator.

Key words: tropical oceans, SST variability, air-sea interaction, net heat flux, temperature advection