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Tropical ocean-atmosphere interactions play an important role in shaping regional and global climate on a broad range of spatiotemporal scales. Since the 1980s, in-situ and satellite observations, reanalysis products, and advancements in climate modeling have facilitated the analysis and enhanced our understanding of variability within the tropical ocean basins. These variability patterns occur on a wide range of timescales, from diurnal, intraseasonal (e.g., MJO), interannual (e.g., ENSO, IOD, and Atlantic Nino) to decadal (e.g., IPO). They drive global atmospheric teleconnections that shape tropical climate variability (e.g. monsoons) and influence extratropical weather systems and extremes (e.g. storm track).
Recent research has uncovered new aspects of tropical ocean-atmosphere interaction, including variations on diurnal timescales, the coupling among the tropical Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans and its implications for seasonal prediction, as well as the tropical Pacific warming pattern. Long-term changes in the Pacific Walker circulation have received renewed attention as they are intricately linked to the future behavior of ENSO under global warming. Furthermore, changes in the Walker circulation can reshape regional patterns of climate change, thereby influencing climate feedbacks and the global sensitivity to radiative forcing.
Climate, its variability, and its long-term change under global warming are shaped by a variety of processes that are mutually interrelated. To examine these challenging issues from various perspectives and foster understanding of the role of tropical ocean-atmosphere interaction in the climate system, this session offers a forum to discuss recent progress in observational, modeling and theoretical studies of multi-scale ocean-atmosphere interaction in the tropics.