Tropical Pacific climate predicted by the DJF climatological cooling rate

The response of the tropical Pacific to climate change is highly contested. There are numerous analyses and theories that argue for either a strengthening and weakening of the zonal gradient in sea surface temperatures. However, many of these analyses and theories rely upon climate models which are known to suffer from biases that can impact how the model treats the tropical Pacific. Here, a theoretical prediction of the tropical sea surface temperature pattern is presented. The formulation of this prediction starts from the thermodynamic energy equations and is created using a spatially uniform forcing change and spatially varying climatological cooling rates. The prediction is La-Niña-like with the western Pacific predicted to warm more than the central Pacific and the precipitation prediction follows a “warmer-gets-wetter” pattern. The reason for the temperature pattern is ultimately tied to the distribution of climatological surface wind speeds, suggesting that known wind speed biases in climate models may contribute to the disagreements.