Analyses of Oceanic Total Cloudiness and Some Relationships with Precipitation and SST Beginning 1900

Oceanic cloudiness, precipitation, and sea-surface temperature (SST) are important and related climate fields. Here development of a new historical analysis of total cloudiness over the oceans is described. Some joint evaluation of cloudiness, SST, and precipitation is done to help to give an overall picture of how these variables change and interact on regional to global scales since 1900. Intercomparisons of the observation-based reconstructions show consistencies among the three different fields. In all three consistent multi-decadal and ENSO variations are apparent. The first joint mode describes multi-decadal variations that indicate increases in all three in the southern oceans, the tropical Indian and east tropical Pacific and the northeast Pacific and Atlantic. The second joint mode describes ENSO, which describes tropical Pacific maxima in cloudiness near the date line, in precipitation slightly east of the date line, and in SST slightly east of the precipitation. Since cloudiness is statistically reconstructed independent of the others, that consistency builds confidence in the validity of all of the reconstructions. The joint evaluations discussed here are preliminary and they suggest the possibility for more extensive climate studies using these data. In addition, these statistical reconstructions may be valuable for the development and validation of improved dynamic climate models.