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Emerging negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics

Sea surface temperatures in the northern North Atlantic have shown a marked decrease over the past several years. The sea surface in the subpolar gyre is now as cold as it was during the last cold phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in the 1990s. This climate index is associated wit...

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Autores principales: Frajka-Williams, Eleanor, Beaulieu, Claudie, Duchez, Aurelie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5593924/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28894211
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11046-x
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author Frajka-Williams, Eleanor
Beaulieu, Claudie
Duchez, Aurelie
author_facet Frajka-Williams, Eleanor
Beaulieu, Claudie
Duchez, Aurelie
author_sort Frajka-Williams, Eleanor
collection PubMed
description Sea surface temperatures in the northern North Atlantic have shown a marked decrease over the past several years. The sea surface in the subpolar gyre is now as cold as it was during the last cold phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in the 1990s. This climate index is associated with shifts in hurricane activity, rainfall patterns and intensity, and changes in fish populations. However, unlike the last cold period in the Atlantic, the spatial pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies in the Atlantic is not uniformly cool, but instead has anomalously cold temperatures in the subpolar gyre, warm temperatures in the subtropics and cool anomalies over the tropics. The tripole pattern of anomalies has increased the subpolar to subtropical meridional gradient in SSTs, which are not represented by the AMO index value, but which may lead to increased atmospheric baroclinicity and storminess. Here we show that the recent Atlantic cooling is likely to persist, as predicted by a statistical forecast of subsurface ocean temperatures and consistent with the irreversible nature of watermass changes involved in the recent cooling of the subpolar gyre.
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spelling pubmed-55939242017-09-13 Emerging negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics Frajka-Williams, Eleanor Beaulieu, Claudie Duchez, Aurelie Sci Rep Article Sea surface temperatures in the northern North Atlantic have shown a marked decrease over the past several years. The sea surface in the subpolar gyre is now as cold as it was during the last cold phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in the 1990s. This climate index is associated with shifts in hurricane activity, rainfall patterns and intensity, and changes in fish populations. However, unlike the last cold period in the Atlantic, the spatial pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies in the Atlantic is not uniformly cool, but instead has anomalously cold temperatures in the subpolar gyre, warm temperatures in the subtropics and cool anomalies over the tropics. The tripole pattern of anomalies has increased the subpolar to subtropical meridional gradient in SSTs, which are not represented by the AMO index value, but which may lead to increased atmospheric baroclinicity and storminess. Here we show that the recent Atlantic cooling is likely to persist, as predicted by a statistical forecast of subsurface ocean temperatures and consistent with the irreversible nature of watermass changes involved in the recent cooling of the subpolar gyre. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-09-11 /pmc/articles/PMC5593924/ /pubmed/28894211 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11046-x Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Frajka-Williams, Eleanor
Beaulieu, Claudie
Duchez, Aurelie
Emerging negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics
title Emerging negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics
title_full Emerging negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics
title_fullStr Emerging negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics
title_full_unstemmed Emerging negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics
title_short Emerging negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics
title_sort emerging negative atlantic multidecadal oscillation index in spite of warm subtropics
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5593924/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28894211
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11046-x
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