Monday, 10 February 2003: 5:00 PM
The Perfect Ocean for Drought
Evidence is presented that the sustained and severe droughts inflicting the
United States, the
Mediterranean, and Southwest Asia since 1998 are part of a hemisphere-wide
climate state that
has been strongly determined by the tropical oceans. The oceanic
conditions of importance
have been the cold, La Niña-like, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the
eastern tropical
Pacific, coexisting with above normal SSTs in the western tropical Pacific
and Indian
oceans. Such a combination is shown to be unprecedented in the instumental
record. To be
sure, La Niña, and a preference for multi-year recurrence, are not unusal.
But such events
have historically been accompanied by cold SSTs throughout the tropical
oceans, rather than
the pervasive warmth of recent years. This latter Indo-Pacific warming is
symptomatic of a
trend that has emerged in the last half century, and is not linked to an
interannual
fluctuation of the ocean. Four different climate models, forced with the
history
of SST variations since 1998 are shown to replicate the drought pattern.
These results
clarify that the drought's origin has been largely in the boreal cold
season, and is
associated with an abnormal poleward shift of the westerly jets and their
attending storm
tracks. The results of additional model simulations indicate that such
climatic disruptions
are symptomatic of the atmospheric sensitivity to both La Niña conditions
and warm
Indo-Pacific SSTs. It is thus proposed that the unique, and sustained
tropical oceanic states
since 1998 were idealy suited to engage a sustained atmospheric pattern
conducive for drought
in the middle latitudes.
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