An Analysis of the Recent Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Trend

Understanding the change in Pacific sea surface temperature, and in particular the change in the zonal gradient of the temperature, is important for understanding the future global climate. However, there is a large discrepancy between the observed trend, which is a strengthening of the zonal temperature gradient, and projections from climate models, which generally project a weakening of the gradient. Here, we present a trend analysis of the thermodynamic energy budget for the tropical Pacific Ocean in order to determine what physical processes have contributed to the recent change in sea surface temperature with the hopes of extending the results to longer time periods.