Revisiting the Equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Response to Global Warming

Abstract The relative roles of the oceanic and atmospheric processes in the pattern formation of the equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) response to global warming is investigated using a set of climate model experiments embedded with a novel partial coupling technique. The modeling results show that the SST response experiences a transition from a La Niña-like warming pattern at the initial stage to an El Niño-like warming pattern at the quasi-equilibrium stage. By decomposing anomalous equatorial Pacific SST into atmosphere-forced passive component and ocean dynamically induced active component, it is found that the SST warming pattern at both stages is entirely induced by its active component. Specifically, the meridional and vertical ocean circulation changes play a dominant role in forming the La Niña-like SST warming pattern at the initial stage, and the zonal and meridional ocean circulation changes are responsible for the formation of the El Niño-like SST warming pattern at the quasi-equilibrium stage. In contrast, the passive SST at both stages is characterized by a zonally uniform warming along the equator, which can be explained by a balance between the total effect of the heat transport divergence associated with the mean ocean circulation and the effect of the passive surface heat flux change. In addition, this study finds that it is the slowdown of the Pacific subtropical cells during the transition period that controls the evolution of the equatorial SST warming pattern by changing the meridional and vertical ocean heat transports.