Premium
The Cause of the Large Cold Bias in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean
Author(s) -
Feng Jie,
Lian Tao,
Chen Dake,
Li Yanjie
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2021gl094616
Subject(s) - climatology , sea surface temperature , advection , environmental science , climate model , climate change , oceanography , atmospheric sciences , geology , physics , thermodynamics
Common biases of climate models in simulating sea surface temperature (SST) greatly limit our understanding of future climate change. The cold SST bias in the northwestern Pacific (NWP), one of the most distinct and persistent biases in all generations of climate models, was previously attributed to the local and remote influences of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, but has never been related to the Indian Ocean. By analyzing simulations from 52 state‐of‐the‐art CMIP6 models and a series of model experiments, we find the strong cold bias in the NWP is primarily caused by the weak cold bias in the tropical Indian Ocean (TIO). Eliminating the TIO bias induces a prominent pressure high over the NWP, which favors a SST warming there through the enhancement of warm oceanic Ekman advection. Our results indicate that the large NWP cold bias could be reduced by ∼66% once the weak TIO bias is corrected.