Program  
 
Modern and past processes of ocean-atmosphere-climate interactions in the low-latitude western Pacific and Indian Ocean
 

 
 
0930
Past changes in the tropical Indo-Pacific climate: State of the art and outstanding issues  (Invited)
Wednesday 9th @ 0930-0950, Conference Room 1
Mahyar Mohtadi* , MARUM-Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Presenter Email: mohtadi@uni-bremen.de
Climate models predict a slowdown of the atmospheric circulation over the tropics for the twenty-first century with severe consequences for global climate. However, debate exists on the appropriate interpretation of historical records and observations over the twentieth century and necessitates longer records of past changes in tropical circulation to test the model results. Reconstructions of past changes in the hydrological cycle of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool (IPWP) suggest that various forcing and feedbacks are involved at different timescales, and that the spatiotemporal response of the IPWP is not uniform. Climate model simulations underscore the sensitivity of tropical circulation to temperature change but remain equivocal and in part, inconsistent with paleo-reconstructions. Untangling the (competing) impacts of different forcings on tropical hydroclimate, and whether and how these are reflected by different proxies at different sites, remains a critical task for both paleoclimate reconstruction and simulation.
 
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