DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6760130
title: Relative importance of meridional and zonal sea surface temperature gradients for the onset of the ice ages and Pliocene-Pleistocene climate evolution

description: Climatologies from the 3 different model simulations performed for the paper published in Paleoceanography (2010, v25, issue 2, https://doi.org/10.1029/2009PA001809). This table shows how the names of the simulations provided here relate to the names in the paper: Simulation names for cross-referencing Name of Files Name in Article EPSST_T_85.*.nc Early Pliocene Simulation New_MZSST_T_85.*.nc Modern Zonal Simulation ctl_85_Kerry.*.nc Modern Control Simulation Additionally the NCL script originally used to create all the figures is included. It is called paleoc_onsetNHG_rev.ncl. The abstract of the paper is below: "During the early Pliocene (roughly 4 Myr ago), the ocean warm water pool extended over most of the tropics. Subsequently, the warm pool gradually contracted toward the equator, while midlatitudes and subpolar regions cooled, establishing a meridional sea surface temperature (SST) gradient comparable to the modern about 2 Myr ago (as estimated on the eastern side of the Pacific). The zonal SST gradient along the equator, virtually nonexistent in the early Pliocene, reached modern values between 1 and 2 Myr ago. Here, we use an atmospheric general circulation model to investigate the relative roles of the changes in the meridional and zonal temperature gradients for the onset of glacial cycles and for Pliocene-Pleistocene climate evolution in general. We show that the increase in the meridional SST gradient reduces air temperature and increases snowfall over most of North America, both factors favorable to ice sheet inception. The impacts of changes in the zonal gradient, while also important over North America, are somewhat weaker than those caused by meridional temperature variations. The establishment of the modern meridional and zonal SST distributions leads to roughly 3.2°C and 0.6°C decreases in global mean temperature, respectively. Changes in the two gradients also have large regional consequences, including aridification of Africa (both gradients) and strengthening of the Indian monsoon (zonal gradient). Ultimately, this study suggests that the growth of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets is a result of the global cooling of Earth's climate since 4 Myr rather than its initial cause. Thus, reproducing the correct changes in the SST distribution is critical for a model to simulate the transition from the warm early Pliocene to a colder Pleistocene climate."
description: Financial support was provided by the grants to A.V.F. from the National Science Foundation (OCE-0550439 and OCE-0901921), Department of Energy Office of Science (DE-FG02-06ER64238, DE-FG02-08ER64590), and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. This work was supported in part by the Yale University Faculty of Arts and Sciences High Performance Computing facility.
description: {"references": ["Brierley, C. M., & Fedorov, A. V. (2010). Relative importance of meridional and zonal sea surface temperature gradients for the onset of the ice ages and Pliocene\u2010Pleistocene climate evolution. Paleoceanography, 25(2)."]}