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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 31, L04302, doi:10.1029/2003GL019091, 2004

Global seiching of thermocline waters between the Atlantic and the Indian-Pacific Ocean Basins

Paola Cessi

Scripps Institution of Oceanography – UCSD, La Jolla, California, USA


Kirk Bryan

Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA


Rong Zhang

Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA


Abstract

Proxy climate data from the Greenland icecap and marine deposits in the Pacific indicate that warm conditions in the North Atlantic are linked to cool conditions in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific, and vice versa. Our ocean models show that the surface branch of the overturning circulation connecting the North Atlantic to the Equatorial Pacific adjusts by exchanging thermocline water between ocean basins in response to changes in deep water formation in the northern North Atlantic. Planetary ocean waves give rise to a global oceanic seiche, such that the volume of thermocline water decreases in the Pacific-Indian Ocean while increasing in the Atlantic Ocean. We conjecture that the remotely forced changes in the thermocline of the Eastern Equatorial Pacific may trigger El Niño events. These global seiches have been previously overlooked due to the difficulty of integrating high-resolution climate models for very long time-scales.

Received 17 November 2003; accepted 15 January 2004; published 20 February 2004.

Index Terms: 4215 Oceanography: General: Climate and interannual variability (3309); 4532 Oceanography: Physical: General circulation; 1620 Global Change: Climate dynamics (3309).

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Citation: Cessi, P., K. Bryan, and R. Zhang (2004), Global seiching of thermocline waters between the Atlantic and the Indian-Pacific Ocean Basins, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L04302, doi:10.1029/2003GL019091.