SIOPACT - Developing a ~250 year climate record for the Southeastern Indian Ocean sector of the Indo-PACific warm pool and its global climate Teleconnections

东印度洋和印度洋-太平洋暖池是全球气候系统的热力发动机，也是环热带/热带以外地区降雨/干旱变率的重要因素，缺乏这些地区的长期仪器气候记录是减少基于模型的气候变化过程研究的不确定性和成功规划未来更温暖世界的主要问题。我们建议开发新的~250年长，绝对日期和季节性解决的重建的海洋表面温度和盐度前所未有的时间和空间覆盖范围的关键站点在东南印度洋部门的印度-太平洋暖池。这将有助于弥补目前在印度洋-太平洋暖池中最大的海洋气候数据缺口，这对全球气候变化和环印度洋社会至关重要。为了实现这一目标，我们的项目将开发地球化学记录，从长寿的大规模珊瑚，可用于量化过去的SST和盐度的波动。该项目的成果将产生关于印度洋-太平洋暖池过去和当前行为及其与印度洋和热带太平洋气候现象的相互作用的关键环境和气候基线，这些现象包括两个多世纪以来的印度洋变暖，厄尔尼诺-南方涛动和（多）十年变率。最后，我们将测试以下假设：1）海洋热浪的时空发生和印度-太平洋暖池的最终扩张在东南印度洋珊瑚礁澳大利亚西北部是与不同的海洋和大气强迫由西太平洋温度梯度在厄尔尼诺，拉尼娜和ENSO中性年调制的太平洋年代际变化。2)热带印度洋变暖是年际和年代际气候异常的独立起搏器。3)印度洋东南部的SST和暖池的扩张对于热带气候异常以及在驱动整个澳大利亚-亚洲热带和热带外地区的热浪和干旱/降雨变率方面至关重要。

Lack of long instrumental climate records from the eastern Indian Ocean and Indo-Pacific warm pool, the heat engine of the global climate system and an essential player in circum-tropical/extratropical rainfall/drought variability, is the main problem for reducing uncertainties in model-based climate change process studies and to successfully plan for a future warmer world. We propose to develop new ~250 year long, absolutely dated and seasonally-resolved reconstructions of sea surface temperature and salinity with unprecedented temporal and spatial coverage from key sites in the southeastern Indian Ocean sector of the Indo-Pacific warm pool. These will help to close the biggest current marine climate data gap in the Indo-Pacific warm pool that is of paramount importance to global climate variability and to circum-Indian Ocean societies. Towards this aim our project will develop geochemical records from long-lived massive corals that can be used to quantify past fluctuations of SST and salinity. Outcomes of this project will produce critical environmental and climatic baselines on past and current behavior of the Indo-Pacific warm pool and its interaction with Indian Ocean and tropical Pacific climate phenomena over more than two centuries, e.g. Indian Ocean warming, El Niño-Southern Oscillation and (multi)decadal variability. Ultimately, we will test the following hypothesis: 1) The spatio-temporal occurrence of marine heat waves and the ultimate expansion of the Indo-Pacific warm pool at the southeastern Indian Ocean reefs off northwest Australia is related to distinct oceanic and atmospheric forcing by the western Pacific temperature gradient during El Niño, La Niña and ENSO neutral years modulated by Pacific decadal variability. 2) Tropical Indian Ocean warming is an independent pacemaker of interannual and decadal climate anomalies. 3) SST in the southeastern Indian Ocean and the expansion of the warm pool is of paramount importance for tropical climate anomalies and in driving heat waves and drough/rainfall variability across the Austral-Asian tropics and extratropics.