Earth:Tropical Warm Pool

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Thermal satellite image of worldwide ocean temperatures, with the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool centered.

The Tropical Warm Pool (TWP) or Indo-Pacific Warm Pool (IPWP) is a mass of ocean water located in the western Pacific Ocean and eastern Indian Ocean which consistently exhibits the highest water temperatures over the largest expanse of the Earth's surface.[1] Climate change and the Intertropical Convergence Zone have been increasingly affecting the warming of the IPWP.[2][3]

History

The Tropical Western Pacific waters hold the ocean's warmest waters.[3] This area is also referred to as the Western Pacific Warm Pool, which is a part of the larger Indo-Pacific Warm Pool.[3] Annual sea surface temperatures in this area reach above 28 degrees celsius.[3] As a result of higher sea surface temperatures, the IPWP is a source of warm moisture. Ultimately leading to heavy local rainfall.[3] High water temperatures are due to seasonal changes in precipitation along the path of the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, from the western Pacific Ocean across the Indonesian Archipelago into the eastern Indian Ocean.[4] Its intensity and extent appear to oscillate over a time period measured in decades.[5]

Climate change effects

Madden-Julian Oscillation Diagram

The Indo-Pacific warm pool has been warming rapidly and expanding during the recent decades, largely from climate change in response to increased carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning.[2] The warm pool nearly doubled in size, from an area of 22 million km2 during 1900–1980, to an area of 40 million km2 during 1981–2018;[6] however, latest research suggests that this expansion rate may be overestimated.[7] This expansion of the warm pool has allowed more cyclones as well as altered global rainfall patterns and variations by changing the life cycle of the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), which is the most dominant mode of weather fluctuation originating in the tropics.[6][8] This oscillation is showcased by eastward movement of suppressed tropical rainfall, specifically over the Pacific and Indian Oceans.[9]

Intertropical Convergent Zone

Intertropical Convergence Zone across the globe, with emphasis on January-July [10]

The Hadley circulation's ascending branch includes the Intertropical Convergent Zone (ITCZ), a narrow tropical area of wind convergence and maximal surface moist static energy.[3] The Asian-Australian monsoons are caused by the rainbelt's latitudinal migration and the winds that accompany it.[3][11] Significant seasonal variations in the local SST are caused by variations in the monsoonal activity, which impact the wind direction and intensity over the IPWP.[3] In particular, the seasonal reversal of the monsoonal winds affects the Indian Ocean sector of the IPWP, which includes the Timor, Arafura, and Banda Seas.[3][11] This results in the upwelling of colder waters by Ekman transport.[3][11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ USGS News Release Jan. 28, 2011
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Weller, Evan; Min, Seung-Ki; Cai, Wenju; Zwiers, Francis W.; Kim, Yeon-Hee; Lee, Donghyun (2016-07-01). "Human-caused Indo-Pacific warm pool expansion". Science Advances 2 (7). doi:10.1126/sciadv.1501719. ISSN 2375-2548. PMID 27419228. Bibcode: 2016SciA....2E1719W. 
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 Moffa‐Sanchez, Paola; Rosenthal, Yair; Babila, Tali L.; Mohtadi, Mahyar; Zhang, Xu (2019). "Temperature Evolution of the Indo‐Pacific Warm Pool Over the Holocene and the Last Deglaciation" (in en). Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology 34 (7): 1107–1123. doi:10.1029/2018PA003455. ISSN 2572-4517. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018PA003455. 
  4. ↑ De Deckker, Patrick (2016-06-29). "The Indo-Pacific Warm Pool: critical to world oceanography and world climate" (in en). Geoscience Letters 3 (1): 20. doi:10.1186/s40562-016-0054-3. ISSN 2196-4092. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40562-016-0054-3. 
  5. ↑ NASA: "Reverberations of the Pacific Warm Pool"
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Roxy, M. K.; Dasgupta, Panini; McPhaden, Michael J.; Suematsu, Tamaki; Zhang, Chidong; Kim, Daehyun (November 2019). "Twofold expansion of the Indo-Pacific warm pool warps the MJO life cycle". Nature 575 (7784): 647–651. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1764-4. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 31776488. Bibcode: 2019Natur.575..647R. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1764-4. 
  7. ↑ Leung, Jeremy Cheuk-Hin; Zhang, Banglin; Gan, Qiuying; Wang, Lei; Qian, Weihong; Hu, Zeng-Zhen (2022-11-24). "Differential expansion speeds of Indo-Pacific warm pool and deep convection favoring pool under greenhouse warming" (in en). npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 5 (1): 1–15. doi:10.1038/s41612-022-00315-w. ISSN 2397-3722. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-022-00315-w. 
  8. ↑ "Warm pool expansion warps MJO – Climate Research Lab, CCCR, IITM". https://www.climate.rocksea.org/research/warm-pool-expansion-warps-mjo/. 
  9. ↑ "Madden–Julian oscillation" (in en), Wikipedia, 2026-03-09, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Madden%E2%80%93Julian_oscillation&oldid=1342486601, retrieved 2026-03-21 
  10. ↑ "File:ITCZ january-july.png - Wikipedia" (in en). 2006-12-13. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ITCZ_january-july.png. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Qu, Tangdong; Meyers, Gary (2005-02-01). "Seasonal Characteristics of Circulation in the Southeastern Tropical Indian Ocean*" (in en). Journal of Physical Oceanography 35 (2): 255–267. doi:10.1175/JPO-2682.1. ISSN 1520-0485. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JPO-2682.1. 



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