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Tropical Pacific response to continental ice sheet topography

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Abstract

The last glacial maximum was marked by maximum land ice extent and lowest greenhouse gases concentration during the last ice age. We explore the impact of glacial continental ice sheet topography on the large-scale tropical ocean–atmosphere climate, in particular the tropical Pacific, in an intermediate complexity coupled model. Increasing the thickness of continental ice sheets causes a southward displaced Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and a strengthening (weakening) of northern (southern) hemisphere winter Hadley cell. The equatorial zonal sea surface temperature gradient weakened with an increased continental ice sheets thickness, the reduction being caused by cooling in the western equatorial Pacific and warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific. The evolution of the tropical climate with changing ice thickness has distinct quasi-linear and nonlinear parts. While the linear part is a direct response to the ice topographic changes, the nonlinear part was a result of the tropical thermocline adjustment. Our analysis of a fully-coupled transient deglacial simulation strongly indicates the dominant role of ice sheet topography in determining the deglacial evolution of the simulated Pacific climate. The thickness of continental ice sheet, separate from ice albedo effect, has significant impact on the tropical ocean–atmosphere climate in particular with the meridional displacement in the Pacific ITCZ. The altered circulation states seen in the model may aid understanding of the relationship between tropical and high-latitude climate records in glacial-interglacial cycles.

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Notes

  1. As with popular convention, we will use ‘El Nino-like’ and ‘La Nina-like’ to indicate equatorial zonal SST gradient states that resembles the present-day analog. We make no assumptions here as to their underlying dynamics.

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Acknowledgments

We greatly appreciate useful discussions with Camille Li. This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant OCE‐0902774 to J. C. H. Chiang and P. Chang and Ministry of Science and Technology Grant 100-2116-M-001 to S.Y. Lee. TraCE-21 k is supported by P2C2 program/NSF, Abrupt Change Program/DOE, EaSM program/DOE, INCITE computing program/DOE and NCAR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Rd. Sec. 2, Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan

    Shih-Yu Lee

  2. Department of Geography and Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    John C. H. Chiang

  3. Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Ping Chang

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  1. Shih-Yu Lee
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  2. John C. H. Chiang
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Correspondence to Shih-Yu Lee.

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Lee, SY., Chiang, J.C.H. & Chang, P. Tropical Pacific response to continental ice sheet topography. Clim Dyn 44, 2429–2446 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2162-0

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