Pan-basin warming now overshadows robust Pacific Decadal Oscillation

Cluett, Allison A.; Bograd, Steven J.; Jacox, Michael G.; Buil, Mercedes Pozo; Hazen, Elliott L.

doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02482-z

i

Pan-basin warming now overshadows robust Pacific Decadal Oscillation

2025
By Cluett, Allison A. ; Bograd, Steven J. ; Jacox, Michael G. ; ...

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Journal Title:

Nature Climate Change
Personal Author:

Cluett, Allison A. ; Bograd, Steven J. ; Jacox, Michael G. ; Buil, Mercedes Pozo ; Hazen, Elliott L.
NOAA Program & Office:

NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) ; SWFSC (Southwest Fisheries Science Center) ; OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; PSL (Physical Sciences Laboratory)
Description:

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has served as a key index linking basin-scale climate variability to marine ecosystem changes in the North Pacific. However, recent apparent breakdowns of PDO–ecosystem correlations have raised concerns about the stability of the mode and its continued relevance in a warming climate. Here we show that basin-wide warming now overwhelms PDO-related sea surface temperature (SST) variability, although neither the PDO’s spatial pattern nor its strength have changed. We introduce the pan-basin pattern as a complementary index to describe the non-stationary SST baseline of the North Pacific. Regional SSTs increasingly reflect the superposition of these two signals, providing an explanation for weakened or inverted PDO–ecosystem correlations. Future use of the PDO index in management will require discerning the effects of internal dynamics from those of absolute changes in SST as extreme and no-analogue ocean conditions driven by interacting natural variability and anthropogenic warming become more common.
Source:

Nature Climate Change, 15(12), 1340-1347
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02482-z
ISSN:

1758-678X ; 1758-6798
Format:

pdf
Publisher:

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Document Type:

Journal Article
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY
Compliance:

Submitted
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:bc6734555ce4edbb94693302c8a57fdc0b721fefeebaf93ad0cddef37d2d8b1eddac52f779f4407e9f198a03c5c6f336a8f88f992ed46efb7f38173ebde0b21b
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/72194/noaa_72194_DS1.pdf
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[PDF - 19.36 MB ]

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