Abstract
Extraordinary multi-seasonal episodes like El Niños of 1982–1983 and 1997–1998 and their widespread teleconnection effects have spurred varied investigations on the changes in sea surface temperature (SST) variability in the post-WWII period. Most of them have been region-specific. We investigate here change in the variance of SST anomaly (SSTA) in the world oceans from 1951–1980 to 1981–2010. Our search for quantitative patterns, in space and time, is aided by a new decomposition of SSTA annual cycle in three orthogonal components, one time-independent, one low frequency (LF, periods: 4–12 months) and one high frequency (HF, periods: 2–3 months). High SSTA variability occurs in small regions clustered near the equator, middle and high latitudes. Sixteen high variability regions (HVR) are identified on the basis of a threshold. Spread over nearly 10% of the ocean area, they occur in four clusters: two in the equatorial cluster, four each in the northern and the southern mid-latitude clusters and six in the Arctic cluster. We find that the plots of HVR-averaged and zonally averaged SSTA variance in 1951–1980 and 1981–2010 show a general tendency of decrease in SSTA variability south of ~15°S and increase north of ~15°S, and a consequential increase in north–south asymmetry. We further find that HVR-averaged HF variance and HVR-averaged LF variance are strongly correlated.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank V Mudkavi, Head, CSIR-4PI, for permitting us to use the Institute facilities, P S Swathi and M K Sharada for a variety of assistance, Thangavelu and his colleagues for system support, and finally NOAA for putting ERSSTv5 dataset and Ferret software in the public domain.
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The first author KSY formulated the methodology for data analysis, wrote computer programs, carried out computations, obtained numerical and graphical results and wrote the manuscript. The second author CKD downloaded, checked and organized global SST datasets, provided critical system support and assisted in writing the manuscript.
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Communicated by Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay
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Yajnik, K.S., Devasana, C.K. Changing variability of sea surface temperature in the post-WWII era. J Earth Syst Sci 130, 144 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-021-01637-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-021-01637-8