The Atlantic Ocean acts as a key pacemaker for Middle East surface air temperature (ME-SAT) multidecadal variability in summer.
The Atlantic Ocean acts as a key pacemaker for Middle East surface air temperature (ME-SAT) multidecadal variability in summer. This is the important result of a study published on NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science unveiling and demonstrating the existence of a North Atlantic-Middle East teleconnection, that is a remote influence of the Atlantic multidecadal variability on the decadal variability of Middle East summer temperatures. This Atlantic−ME summer connection involves ocean−atmosphere interactions through multiple ocean basins, with an influence from the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.
The study, led by Muhammad Azhar Ehsan currently at ICTP and co-authored by Dario Nicolì, Alessio Bellucci and Paolo Ruggieri, CMCC scientists at the Climate Simulation and Prediction Division, examined the impact of North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) variations, one of the main drivers for Northern Hemisphere climate, on summer ME−SAT.
The SST variability was analyzed through an important indicator, termed AMV – Atlantic Multidecadal Variability or AMO – Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation to remind of its apparent oscillatory behavior; the instrumental records show that AMO/AMV is associated with a low frequency fluctuation of basin-wide anomalously warm and cold phases, with a typical 40-80-year time scale.
The phenomenon is not only interesting from an academic point of view, but also for its impacts on the climate across a large area: on the regional and local scale, it drives the climate of North America and western Europe, Mediterranean surface temperatures, influences the global monsoon, the current high levels of Atlantic hurricane activity, controls Sahel rainfall, and impacts Eurasian climate and the South Asian summer monsoon.
Read more at Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change
Image by Jonas Fehre from Pixabay
