Oscillations in Ocean and Land Heating

The climatological distribution of the land and ocean average diabatic heating and rainfall is investigated in an effort to assess the role of land surface characteristics, in conjunction with the ocean, in climate system variability. We find a robust relationship between cooling/heating of the tropical land masses and heating/cooling of the ocean, with an oscillation period of about 10 years. These oscillations are apparent in both the reanalysis datasets (1960-2010) and the IPCC model integrations of the last century and through the next century. It is found that the net heating over land is generally out of phase with the net heating over the ocean with high negative correlations. This relationship is stronger in the tropics, especially over the tropical Atlantic, Africa and Indian Ocean. Given this phase shifts between heating and cooling, we isolate periods where heating over land is anomalously high or low to investigate the atmospheric and oceanic response. In contrast to prevailing theories, it is shown that that the tropical land masses may contain significant inherent and interannual/interdecadal climate memory.