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149044 - Pacific decadal variability over the last 2000 years.pdf (1.55 MB)

Pacific decadal variability over the last 2000 years and implications for climatic risk

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The Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, an index which defines decadal climate variability throughout the Pacific, is generally assumed to have positive and negative phases that each last 20-30 years. Here we present a 2000-year reconstruction of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, obtained using information preserved in Antarctic ice cores, that shows negative phases are short (7 ± 5 years) and infrequent (occurring 10% of the time) departures from a predominantly neutral-positive state that lasts decades (61 ± 56 years). These findings suggest that Pacific Basin climate risk is poorly characterised due to over-representation of negative phases in post-1900 observations. We demonstrate the implications of this for eastern Australia, where drought risk is elevated during neutral-positive phases, and highlight the need for a re-evaluation of climate risk for all locations affected by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. The initiation and future frequency of negative phases should also be a research priority given their prevalence in more recent centuries.

Funding

Australian Research Council

History

Publication title

Communications Earth & Environment

Article number

33

Number

33

Pagination

1-9

ISSN

2662-4435

Department/School

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Atmospheric processes and dynamics; Climate change adaptation measures (excl. ecosystem); Climatological hazards (e.g. extreme temperatures, drought and wildfires)

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