Identification

Title

The mid-1970s climate shift in the Pacific and the relative roles of forced versus inherent decadal variability

Abstract

A significant shift from cooler to warmer tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs), part of a pattern of basinwide SST anomalies involved with a transition to the positive phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), occurred in the mid-1970s with effects that extended globally. One view is that this change was entirely natural and was a product of internally generated decadal variability of the Pacific climate system. However, during the mid-1970s there was also a significant increase of global temperature and changes to a number of other quantities that have been associated with changes in external forcings, particularly increases of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels. Analysis of observations, an unforced control run from a global coupled climate model, and twentieth-century simulations with changes in external forcings show that the observed 1970s climate shift had a contribution from changes in external forcing superimposed on what was likely an inherent decadal fluctuation of the Pacific climate system. Thus, this inherent decadal variability associated with the IPO delayed until the 1970s what likely would have been a forced climate shift in the 1960s from a negative to positive phase of the IPO.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d79c6zfd

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2009-02-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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Use constraints

Copyright 2009 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact