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White et al. 2003
White, W.B., Dettinger, M.D. and Cayan, D.R. (2003). Sources of global warming of the upper ocean on decadal period scales. Journal of Geophysical Research 108: doi: 10.1029/2002JC001396. issn: 0148-0227.

Recent studies find global climate variability in the upper ocean and lower atmosphere during the twentieth century dominated by quasi-biennial, interannual, quasi-decadal and interdecadal signals. The quasi-decadal signal in upper ocean temperature undergoes global warming/cooling of ~0.1¿C, similar to that occurring with the interannual signal (i.e., El Ni¿o--Southern Oscillation), both signals dominated by global warming/cooling in the tropics. From the National Centers for Environmental Prediction troposphere reanalysis and Scripps Institution of Oceanography upper ocean temperature reanalysis we examine the quasi-decadal global tropical diabatic heat storage (DHS) budget from 1975 to 2000. We find the anomalous DHS warming tendency of 0.3--0.9 W m-2 driven principally by a downward global tropical latent-plus-sensible heat flux anomaly into the ocean, overwhelming the tendency by weaker upward shortwave-minus-longwave heat flux anomaly to drive an anomalous DHS cooling tendency. During the peak quasi-decadal warming the estimated dissipation of DHS anomaly of 0.2--0.5 W m-2 into the deep ocean and a similar loss to the overlying atmosphere through air-sea heat flux anomaly are balanced by a decrease in the net poleward Ekman heat advection out of the tropics of 0.4--0.7 W m-2. This scenario is nearly the opposite of that accounting for global tropical warming during the El Ni¿o. These diagnostics confirm that even though the global quasi-decadal signal is phase-locked to the 11-year signal in the Sun's surface radiative forcing of ~0.1 W m-2, the anomalous global tropical DHS tendency cannot be driven by it directly.

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Abstract

Keywords
Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Ocean/atmosphere interactions (0312, 4504), Oceanography, Physical, Upper ocean processes, Solar Physics, Astrophysics, and Astronomy, Solar activity cycle, Global Change, Climate dynamics
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research
http://www.agu.org/journals/jb/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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