Local origins of interdecadal Pacific variability in the tropical and North Pacific Ocean: evidence from a comparative study of coral oxygen isotope records

Abstract

Interdecadal Pacific variability (IPV) is commonly observed in both the tropical and mid-latitude Pacific Ocean, and has a widespread influence on surface climate in the Pan-Pacific Basin. This variability is recorded by climate proxies such as geochemical parameters preserved in corals. However, the origins of IPV remain uncertain. To shed light on this, interdecadal variations in two long coral δ18O records from Nauru Island and the South China Sea (SCS), respectively located in the tropical Pacific and the mid-latitude North Pacific Ocean, were investigated. The interdecadal fluctuations in the δ18O series from Nauru Island (tropical Pacific) match those of the NINO3.4 index reasonably well (r=–0.30, n=96, p=0.0015), but are not correlated with those of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) index (r=–0.17, n=96, p=0.05). The δ18O time series from the SCS (northwestern Pacific), by contrast, co-vary with the PDO index (r=–0.30, n=156, p=0.0007), but are out of phase with the NINO3.4 index at the interdecadal timescale (r=0.04, n=156, p=0.31). The impact on the interdecadal variability of processes occurring outside the growth region of corals is generally weak. The results thus do not support a tropical origin of IPV, but demonstrate that the interdecadal variability in the tropical Pacific and the North Pacific originates predominantly from local coupled ocean–atmosphere processes within these regions. The results also suggest that tropical–extratropical interactions played a role in IPV between 1920 and 1940, which indicates that IPV is a complex climatic phenomenon that involves multiple forcing mechanisms.