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Abstract

The authors have investigated the interactions of the tropical oceans on interannual timescales by conducting a series of uncoupled atmospheric and oceanic general circulation experiments and hybrid-coupled model simulations. The results illustrate the key role of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation phenomenon in generating interannual variability in all three tropical ocean basins. The authors investigated, also, whether ENSO is part of a zonally propagating "wave', which travels around the globe with a timescale of several years. Consistent with observations, the upper-ocean heat content in the various numerical simulations seems to propagate slowly around the globe. SST anomalies in the Pacific Ocean introduce a global atmospheric response, which in turn forces variations in the other tropical oceans. Since the different oceans exhibit different response characteristics to low-frequency wind changes, the individual tropical ocean responses can add up coincidentally to look like a global wave, and that appears to be the situation. -from Authors