A groundbreaking discovery by an international team of researchers has revealed a new climate pattern that significantly impacts the Southern Hemisphere. Named the ‘Southern Hemisphere Circumpolar Wavenumber-4 Pattern’ (W4), this phenomenon emerges in the southwestern subtropical Pacific near Australia and New Zealand, affecting climate shifts across the entire Southern Hemisphere.
“This discovery is like finding a new switch in Earth’s climate,” says meteorologist Balaji Senapati from the University of Reading in the UK. “It shows that a relatively small area of the ocean can have wide-reaching effects on global weather and climate patterns.”
The W4 pattern consists of four alternating regions of warm and cool air, repeating annually and significantly influencing atmospheric temperatures and wind patterns.
Real World Observations and Advanced Climate Modeling
Researchers combined real-world observations with advanced climate modeling spanning 300 years to identify the W4 pattern. They found that ocean temperature changes in the small region near Australia and New Zealand serve as a control lever, influencing atmospheric temperatures and wind patterns in the southern sub-tropics and mid-latitudes.
Westerly winds carry the warmed or cooled air around the globe, creating an anomalous W4 climate pattern. This pattern is distinct from the well-known El Niño and La Niña phenomena, providing new insights into climate variability.
“Understanding this new weather system could greatly improve weather forecasting and climate prediction, especially in the Southern Hemisphere,” says Senapati. “It might help explain climate changes that were previously mysterious and could improve our ability to predict extreme weather and climate events.”
The W4 pattern is most active during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, between December and February. While the researchers did not explore how changes in this new El Niño-like phenomenon might play out, they believe it has been influencing the world’s weather for a long time.
As the Southern Hemisphere experiences increasing dryness, warming, and storminess, understanding the W4 pattern could be key to explaining these changes and improving climate predictions.
The team emphasizes the need for a better understanding of the linkage between Southern Hemisphere climate variability and the southwestern subtropical Pacific. Their research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, marks a significant step forward in climate science, offering new avenues for studying and predicting global weather patterns.
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