Coastal Ocean Response to the Global Warming Acceleration and Hiatus

Enhui Liao1,2, Wenfang Lu1,3, Xiao-Hai Yan1,3, Yuwu Jiang4 and Autumn N Kidwell3, (1)Xiamen University, College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen, China, (2)University of Delaware, School of Marine Science and Policy, Newark, DE, United States, (3)University of Delaware, School of Marine Science and Policy, NEWARK, DE, United States, (4)Xiamen University, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen, China
Abstract:
Coastlines are fundamental to humans for habitation, commerce, and natural resources. Many coastal ecosystem disasters, caused by extreme sea surface temperature (SST), were reported when the global climate shifted from global warming to global surface warming hiatus after 1998. The task of understanding the coastal SST variations within the global context is an urgent matter. Our study on the global coastal SST from 1982 to 2013 revealed a significant cooling trend in the low and mid latitudes (31.4% of the global coastlines) after 1998, while 17.9% of the global coastlines changed from a cooling trend to a warming trend concurrently. The reverse in the Northern Pacific and Atlantic coincided with the phase shift of Pacific Decadal Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation. These coastal SST changes are larger than the changes of the global mean and open ocean, resulting in a fast increase of extremely hot/cold days, and thus extremely hot/cold events. Meanwhile, a continuous increase of SST was detected for a considerable portion of coastlines (46.7%) with a strengthened warming along the coastlines in the high northern latitudes. Our results suggest that the global warming continued after 1998, but with a modified weaker pattern in global coastal regions.
Back to: U.S. CLIVAR Session on Oceanic Heat Uptake, Earth's Energy Imbalance, and the Global Warming "Hiatus" II Posters