Responses of the Saharan temperature to Regional Sea Surface Temperature Changes

The surface air temperature (SAT) over the Sahara Desert has been increasing at a much faster rate than other tropical and subtropical regions in recent decades. By conducting a series of experiments, I found that the sea surface temperature (SST) change plays a predominant role in recent Saharan warming during the boreal warm season from 1979 to 2020. However, the key ocean basins that dominate the Saharan SAT increase are not clear. To address this question, the model output from three SST patch experiments based on a global climate model in combination with the Green Function (GF) approach are employed to investigate the response of the Saharan SAT to regional SST changes. The results from the SST patch experiments indicate that the Saharan SAT in the boreal warm season is most sensitive to the Mediterranean sea, east extratropical Atlantic and west tropical Atlantic in the Northern Hemisphere. Further idealized SST experiments will be conducted in the future to diagnose the mechanism underlying the Saharan warming driven by the SST anomalies in the Mediterranean sea.