Abstract
Sea surface temperature (SST) in the subpolar North Atlantic has significantly decreased at a rate of − 0.39 (\(\pm 0.23\)) K/century during 1900–2020, which runs counter to global warming due to anthropogenic forcing. The cooling in the subpolar North Atlantic, known as the North Atlantic cold blob, could be driven by a host of mechanisms involving both the ocean and atmosphere. Here, we present evidence that changes in the atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic, in particular a centennial trend towards a more positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), could have contributed to the cold blob. The positive NAO intensifies the surface wind over the subpolar North Atlantic and induces excessive heat loss from the air-sea interface. According to an idealized mixed layer heat balance model, the NAO induced heat loss alone cools the subpolar North Atlantic by 0.26 K/century, which explains 67% of the observed cold blob SST trend. The NAO-induced cooling is partially offset by the warming effect from the East Atlantic Pattern, and the net effect of changes in atmospheric circulation explains 44% of the observed cooling trend. Thus, besides ocean circulation, including the slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the large-scale atmospheric circulation might have played an equally important role in prompting the century-long SST changes in the subpolar North Atlantic.
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Data availability
The data analyzed in this study are from publicly accessible data archives. ERA20C: https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era-20c. 20CR: https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.20thC_ReanV3.html. NCEP/NCAR reanalysis: https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.html. HadISST data provided by Met Office Hadley Center, from their website at https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/data/download.html. COBE-SST2, Kaplan SST, ERSSTv4 and ERSSTv5 data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their website at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.cobe2.html, https://www.psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.kaplan_sst.html, https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.ersst.v4.html, and https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.ersst.v5.html, respectively.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dr. Duo Chan for discussions on SST datasets, and Dr. Young-Oh Kwon for comments on the stochastic modeling approach.
Funding
This study is supported by the seed grant funds from the Pennsylvania State University’s Institute of Computational and Data Sciences (Y.F. and L.L.). R.C. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42076007). P. Z. is partially supported by U.S. NSF grant (AGS 2232582).
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YF, LL and WL conceived the study. LL built the heat flux decomposition framework. YF, PZ, and RC performed the data analysis and prepared the related figures. All authors discussed the results and wrote/revised the manuscript.
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Fan, Y., Liu, W., Zhang, P. et al. North Atlantic Oscillation contributes to the subpolar North Atlantic cooling in the past century. Clim Dyn 61, 5199–5215 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06847-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06847-y