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Accelerated warming in the North Pacific since 2013

Nature Climate Change volume 14, pages 929–931 (2024)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 02 August 2024

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Abstract

Sea surface temperature increase in the global ocean exhibits marked spatial and temporal variations, with warming in the North Pacific significantly higher than in other basins since 2013. This accelerated warming is related to a shoaling of ocean surface mixed-layer depth and is partially dampened by an increase in anomalous net surface heat flux from the ocean. Among heat-flux components, latent heat flux is dominant.

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Fig. 1: SSTA in the global ocean and the North Pacific.
Fig. 2: Causes of the warming in the North Pacific.

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Data availability

The ERSSTv.5 (ref. 15), HadISST SST16, OIv.2.1 SST17, OSTIA SST18, ERA5 (ref. 19) and GODAS20 reanalyses can be downloaded from https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.ersst.v5.html, http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadisst/data/download.html, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/optimum-interpolation-sst, https://ghrsst-pp.metoffice.gov.uk/ostia-website/index.html, https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/era5-atmospheric-reanalysis and https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.godas.html, respectively.

Code availability

The GrADS (http://cola.gmu.edu/grads/) was used to perform the analysis and generate all the plots in this paper.

Change history

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the comments and suggestions from H. Wang, Y. Liu and D. Zhang. The scientific results and conclusions, as well as any views or opinions expressed herein, are ours and do not necessarily reflect the views of NWS, NOAA or the Department of Commerce. PMEL contribution no. 5638. This work was partially supported by Guangdong Major Project of Basic and Applied Basic Research (2020B0301030004; Y.L.) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42175056; Y.L.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. NOAA/NCEP Climate Prediction Center, College Park, MD, USA

    Zeng-Zhen Hu & Jieshun Zhu

  2. NOAA/Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory, Seattle, WA, USA

    Michael J. McPhaden

  3. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Asheville, NC, USA

    Boyin Huang

  4. CMA Climate Study Key Laboratory, National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China

    Yunyun Liu

Authors
  1. Zeng-Zhen Hu
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  2. Michael J. McPhaden
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  4. Jieshun Zhu
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  5. Yunyun Liu
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Contributions

Z.-Z.H. and M.J.M. conceptualized the project, and Z.-Z.H. undertook the analysis, visualization, writing, reviewing and editing of the manuscript. The other authors (B.H., J.Z., and Y.L.) provided suggestions, and reviewed and edited the paper. All authors read and approved the final paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zeng-Zhen Hu.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Jing-Jia Luo and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Hu, ZZ., McPhaden, M.J., Huang, B. et al. Accelerated warming in the North Pacific since 2013. Nat. Clim. Chang. 14, 929–931 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02088-x

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