This study examines the tropical linkages to interdecadal climate fluctuations over the North Pacific during boreal winter through a comprehensive and physically based analysis of a wide variety of observational datasets spanning the twentieth century. Simple difference maps between epochs of high sea level pressure over the North Pacific (1900–24 and 1947–76) and epochs of low pressure (1925–4...

We investigated the effects of large-scale orography on the tropical coupled atmosphere-ocean system over the Indian and Pacific Oceans in northern summer, using the Meteorological Research Institute coupled atmosphere-ocean General Circulation Model (GCM). Six different experiments were conducted with mountain heights of 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, and 0% of the standard mountain height. The res...

Results from multiyear integrations of a coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation model are described. The atmospheric component is a rhomboidal 15, 18-level version of the Center for Ocean–Land–Atmosphere Studies atmospheric general circulation model. The oceanic component is the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory ocean model with a horizontal domain extending from 708S to 658N. The oce...

The exchange of waters between the Pacific and the Southern Oceans occurs along the eastern boundary of the South Pacific. Because water masses of the Antarctic provide a connection among the world’s ocean basins, these water masses maintain the ability to influence changes in ocean circulation and climate (Lynch-Stieglitz et al., 1996). One of the primary goals of Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) ...

SEPTEMBER 2004 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | T hough much progress has been made in the development of coupled ocean–atmosphere models, many discrepancies remain between observations and model results. The tropical east Pacific (i.e., east of about 140°W) is a region in which the performance of coupled models has been problematic (Mechoso et al. 1995), with particular difficulty in the simu...

D ow Dominant climatic factors controlling the lifetime peak intensity of typhoons are determined from six decades of Pacific typhoon data. We find that upper ocean temperatures in the low-latitude northwestern Pacific (LLNWP) and sea surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific control the seasonal average lifetime peak intensity by setting the rate and duration of typhoon intensific...

The Earth underwent a major transition from the warm climates of the Pliocene to the Pleistocene ice ages between 3.2 and 2.6 million years ago. The intensification of Northern Hemisphere Glaciation is the most obvious result of the Plio-Pleistocene transition. However, recent data show that the ocean also underwent a significant change, with the convergence of deep water mass properties in the...

In the Pacific Ocean, air and ocean temperatures, atmospheric carbon dioxide, landings of anchovies and sardines, and the productivity of coastal and open ocean ecosystems have varied over periods of about 50 years. In the mid-1970s, the Pacific changed from a cool "anchovy regime" to a warm "sardine regime." A shift back to an anchovy regime occurred in the middle to late 1990s. These large-sc...

Air-sea exchange of elemental mercury (Hg(0)) is a critical component of the global biogeochemical Hg cycle. To better understand variability in atmospheric and oceanic Hg(0), we collected high-resolution measurements across large gradients in seawater temperature, salinity, and productivity in the Pacific Ocean (20°N-15°S). We modeled surface ocean Hg inputs and losses using an ocean general c...

Population outbreaks of the corallivorous crown-of-thorns seastar (COTS), Acanthaster 'planci' L., are among the most important biological disturbances of tropical coral reefs. Over the past 50 years, several devastating outbreaks have been documented around Guam, an island in the western Pacific Ocean. Previous analyses have shown that in the Pacific Ocean, COTS larval dispersal may be geograp...