Global warming is breaking a 400-year climate link between two oceans

The Indian and Pacific oceans have been climatically linked for centuries, but scientists say that connection is now breaking down in an exceptional way. Ancient climate records suggest volcanoes disrupted the relationship in the past, while today human-caused warming appears to be driving a much more unusual shift. Global warming is breaking a 400-year climate link between two oceans.

Com A new study suggests that the climate connection between the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans can be disrupted by major volcanic eruptions, while human-caused greenhouse gas emissions may now be driving an even more unusual breakdown in that relationship. Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) combined paleoclimate evidence with climate model simulations to examine how closely the two ocean basins have behaved over the past several centuries. Their findings indicate that volcanism can temporarily weaken the climate link between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

More recently, however, human-driven climate forcing has produced what the researchers describe as an "exceptional" shift in the way climate variability in the two regions is connected. The study was published in Nature Communications under the title "Coupling of Pacific and Indian Ocean variability disrupted by 19th century volcanism." A Climate Connection That Usually Moves in Step Climate conditions across the Indian Ocean often respond to changes occurring in the Pacific Ocean. This connection helps shape broad patterns of rainfall, temperature, and atmospheric circulation across the tropics.