Abstract. The variability of the sea surface temperature (SST) in
the northwest Pacific has been studied on seasonal, annual and interannual
scales based on the monthly datasets of extended reconstructed
sea surface temperature (ERSST) 3b (1854–2017, 164 years) and
optimum interpolation sea surface temperature version 2 (OISST V2 (1988–2017,
30 years). The overall trends, spatial–temporal
distribution characteristics, regional differences in seasonal trends and
seasonal differences of SST in the northwest Pacific have been calculated
over the past 164 years based on these datasets. In the past 164 years, the
SST in the northwest Pacific has been increasing linearly year by year, with
a trend of 0.033 ∘C/10 years.
The SST during the period from 1870 to
1910 is slowly decreasing and staying in the range between 25.2
and 26.0 ∘C. During the period of 1910–1930, the SST as a whole
maintained a low value, which is at the minimum of 164 years. After
1930, SST continued to increase until now. The increasing trend in the
past 30 years has reached 0.132 ∘C/10 years, and the increasing trend
in the past 10 years is 0.306 ∘C/10 years, which is around 10 times that of
the past 164 years. The SST in most regions of the northwest Pacific
showed a linear increasing trend year by year, and the increasing trend in
the offshore region was stronger than that in the ocean and deep-sea region.
The change in trend of the SST in the northwest Pacific shows a large
seasonal difference, and the increasing trend in autumn and winter is larger
than that in spring and summer. There are some correlations between the SST
and some climate indices and atmospheric parameters; the correlations between
the SST and some atmospheric parameters have been discussed, such as those of the North Atlantic
Oscillation (NAO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Southern
Oscillation Index (SOI) anomaly, total column
water (TCW), NINO3.4 index, sea level pressure (SLP), precipitation, temperature at 2 m (T2) and wind speed. The
lowest SST in China offshore basically occurred in February and the
highest in August. The SST fluctuation in the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea (BYS)
is the largest, with a range from 5 to 22 ∘C; the
SST in the East China Sea (ECS) is from 18 to 27 ∘C; the smallest
fluctuations occur in the South China Sea (SCS), maintained
at range of 26 to 29 ∘C. There are large
differences between the mean and standard deviation in different sea
regions.
Centennial‐Scale SE Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Variability Over the Past 2,300 Years