As global temperatures warm, the Southern Ocean – between Antarctica and other continents – will eventually release heat absorbed from the atmosphere, leading to projected long-term increases in precipitation over East Asia and the Western U.S., regardless of climate mitigation efforts.
These teleconnections between the tropical Pacific and far-flung areas are reported in a Cornell-led computer-model study published April 2 in Nature Geosciences.
While other computer models have projected similar precipitation increases generated by a warming Southern Ocean, major uncertainties and a wide range of predictions exist between models.
The new study serves to reduce those uncertainties, which could improve predictions of global mean temperatures and regional precipitation.
Photo Credit: Kanenori via Pixabay
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