video: The video highlights that the expansion of the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) over the past 60 years is dominantly attributable to man-made greenhouse gas increase. The top panel compares the observed IPWP change over time in red which continues to grow with the long-term average position from 1971-2000 represented by the dashed line. The second panel shows the same as the top panel but using multiple climate model simulations integrated with human influences (greenhouse gases, aerosols, and other anthropogenic forcing agents) combined with natural (solar and volcanic activities) forcings. A large growth of the IPWP can be seen. The third panel shows that using multiple climate model simulations integrated with no human influences does not cause a long-term expansion of the IPWP. The bottom panel summarises these findings by showing the size of the IPWP over time from the observations (black line), and climate model simulations with and without human influences in green and blue lines, respectively, as a percentage of the size of a long-term average from 1971-2000. The overall increase over the past 60 years is much larger than what occurs due to climate fluctuations such as during El Niño-Southern Oscillation events. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the July 1, 2016, issue of Science Advances, published by AAAS. The paper, by E. Weller at Pohang University of Science and Technology in Pohang, South Korea, and colleagues was titled, 'Human-caused Indo-Pacific warm pool expansion.' view more
Credit: Produced by Evan Weller using MATLAB