Abstract
We investigate sea level changes in the western North Pacific for twenty-first century climate projections by analyzing the output from 15 coupled models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3). Projected changes in the wind stress due to those in sea level pressure (SLP) result in the projected sea level changes. In the western North Pacific (30−50°N, 145−170°E), the inter-model standard deviation of the sea level change relative to the global mean is comparable to that based on the multi-model ensemble (MME) mean. Whereas a positive SLP change in the eastern North Pacific (40−50°N, 170−150°W) induces a large northward shift of the Kuroshio Extension (KE), a negative SLP change in this region induces a strong intensification of the KE. Large inter-model variability of the SLP projection in the eastern North Pacific causes a large uncertainty of the sea level projection in the western North Pacific. Models with a larger northward shift (intensification) of the KE exhibit a poleward shift (an intensification) of the Aleutian Low (AL) larger than that for the MME mean. However, models that exhibit a larger intensification of the AL do not necessarily show a larger intensification of the KE. Our analysis suggests that the SLP change that induces an intensification of the KE is associated with a teleconnection from the equatorial Pacific, and that the SLP change that induces a northward shift of the KE is characterized by a zonal mean change.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Global Environmental Research Fund (S-5-2) of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. We acknowledge the modeling groups, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM), for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model data set. Support for this data set is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy. We are thankful for the altimeter products produced by Ssalto/Duacs and distributed by AVISO with support from the Centre National d’etudes Spatiales (CNES). We thank Kazuhiro Oshima, Youichi Tanimoto, and Tomoaki Ose for their useful comments. We are also grateful to Osamu Arakawa for archiving data. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, which were useful for improving the manuscript.
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Sueyoshi, M., Yasuda, T. Inter-model variability of projected sea level changes in the western North Pacific in CMIP3 coupled climate models. J Oceanogr 68, 533–543 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-012-0117-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-012-0117-9