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Peer-reviewedCC BY-NCScience Advances

Tropical impacts of the Southern Ocean underestimated by mean-state biases

  • Yue Dong1,2
  • Kezhou Lu1,2
  • Yen‐Ting Hwang3,4
  • Rong Jing Hu3,4
  • Paulo Ceppi5,6
  • Philipp Breul7,5,6
  • Lettie Anne Roach8,9
  • Clara Deser10,11
11 affiliations
  1. 1Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  2. 2Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California Los Angeles
  3. 3Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
  4. 4Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Taiwan University
  5. 5Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK
  6. 6Department of Physics, Imperial College London
  7. 7Department of Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
  8. 8Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany
  9. 9Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
  10. 10Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
  11. 11Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
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Abstract

Observed sea-surface temperature (SST) trends over recent decades feature cooling in the tropical eastern Pacific and the Southern Ocean (SO). Growing evidence suggests that tropical cooling may partly stem from remote impacts of the SO. Using a hierarchy of multimodel simulations, we demonstrate that these teleconnections are robustly modulated by the mean-state intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ): Models with a more realistic ITCZ simulate a stronger tropical SST response to SO forcing via stronger wind-evaporation-SST feedback. When realistic Antarctic meltwater forcing is included, correcting a model's tropical mean-state bias yields a stronger tropical cooling response to meltwater-driven SO cooling, improving the agreement between simulated and observed SST trends. Our results suggest that the SO's contribution to tropical warming patterns is systematically underestimated due to model mean-state biases. Improving representations of the mean-state climate is therefore critical for accurately assessing large-scale climate responses associated with historical and future warming patterns.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{dong2026tropical,
  title = {{Tropical impacts of the Southern Ocean underestimated by mean-state biases}},
  author = {Yue Dong and Kezhou Lu and Yen‐Ting Hwang and Rong Jing Hu and Paulo Ceppi and Philipp Breul and Lettie Anne Roach and Clara Deser},
  journal = {Science Advances},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  doi = {10.1126/sciadv.aed1936},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed1936},
  note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Tropical impacts of the Southern Ocean underestimated by mean-state biases
AU  - Yue Dong
AU  - Kezhou Lu
AU  - Yen‐Ting Hwang
AU  - Rong Jing Hu
AU  - Paulo Ceppi
AU  - Philipp Breul
AU  - Lettie Anne Roach
AU  - Clara Deser
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/05
JO  - Science Advances
DO  - 10.1126/sciadv.aed1936
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed1936
AB  - Observed sea-surface temperature (SST) trends over recent decades feature cooling in the tropical eastern Pacific and the Southern Ocean (SO). Growing evidence suggests that tropical cooling may partly stem from remote impacts of the SO. Using a hierarchy of multimodel simulations, we demonstrate that these teleconnections are robustly modulated by the mean-state intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ): Models with a more realistic ITCZ simulate a stronger tropical SST response to SO forcing via stronger wind-evaporation-SST feedback. When realistic Antarctic meltwater forcing is included, correcting a model's tropical mean-state bias yields a stronger tropical cooling response to meltwater-driven SO cooling, improving the agreement between simulated and observed SST trends. Our results suggest that the SO's contribution to tropical warming patterns is systematically underestimated due to model mean-state biases. Improving representations of the mean-state climate is therefore critical for accurately assessing large-scale climate responses associated with historical and future warming patterns.
SN  - 2375-2548
ER  -