Abstract
Subantarctic Mode Water is a water mass with nearly vertically homogeneous physical properties in the Southern Ocean, which exhibit variability at various time scales. This study investigates the low-frequency variability of upper-ocean temperature in the Central Pacific Subantarctic Mode Water (CPSAMW) formation region since the 1980s using an eddy-resolving ocean model and two observation-based products. It is found that the CPSAMW core layer temperature has significant low-frequency variability, with an unusually cold period around 2000 and warm periods around 2005 and 2015, respectively. This low-frequency variability is closely related to the change in local mixed layer temperature, which in turn is mainly attributed to the change in surface latent heat flux resulting from the change in wind speed. Further analysis indicates that the low-frequency variability of wind speed in the CPSAMW formation region is dominated mainly by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) and to a lesser extent by the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). This study reveals the relationship in the low-frequency variability of CPSAMW temperature with the IPO and SAM, and provides insight into the remote influence of Pacific decadal variability on SAMW variability.
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Data availability
The 0.1° OFES output was provided by the Asia Pacific Data Research Center (http://apdrc.soest.hawaii.edu/dods/public_ofes/OfES/ncep_0.1_global_mmean). The Argo data were obtained from the Argo website (http://sio-argo.ucsd.edu/RG_Climatology.html). The EN4 data is available at https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/en4/download-en4-2-1.html. The Ishii data is downloaded from https://climate.mri-jma.go.jp/pub/archives/Ishii-et-al_Ocean-Subsurface-TS-v7.2/. The ERA5 product is obtained from https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/era5-atmospheric-reanalysis. The OISST data is available at https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/sst-data-noaa-optimal-interpolation-oi-sst-analysis-version-2-oisstv2-1x1.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC; 42230405 and 41976006) and the Laoshan Laboratory (No. LSKJ202202401).
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WJ and YL were responsible for design of the research. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by WJ. YL and R-HZ helped interpret the results. WJ wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors provided comments on different versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Jing, W., Luo, Y. & Zhang, RH. Low-frequency variability of upper-ocean temperature in the Central Pacific Subantarctic Mode Water formation region since the 1980s. Clim Dyn 62, 1–14 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07134-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07134-0