Oral Presentation AMOS Annual Meeting and International Conference on Tropical Meteorology and Oceanography

Modelled influence of the South Pacific on Tropical Pacific variablity (#263)

Christine Chung 1 , Scott Power 1 , Arnold Sullivan 2 , Francois Delage 1
  1. Bureau of Meteorology, Docklands, VIC, Australia
  2. CSIRO, Aspendale, VIC, Australia

The Tropical Pacific ocean is a major driver of global climate variability on multi-year and decadal timescales via the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) processes. However, Tropical Pacific variability is itself influenced by changes in other ocean basins and regions. We use the newly developed ACCESS-CM2 coupled model to simulate the influence of remote variability on the Tropical Pacific, focusing in particular on South Pacific variability. We will present idealised experiments in which multi-decadal variability in the South Pacific is 'clamped', or suppressed. The resulting impacts on ENSO, the IPO, and climate variability around the Australian and Indo-Pacific regions will be discussed.