The ocean's role in climate variability
摘要
Because of its vast volume and heat capacity, the ocean contains most of the memory of the earth's ocean - atmosphere coupled system. It has been suggested that the ocean may delay global warming by absorbing large amounts of heat, that it may cause ab- rupt climate change due to its disrupted thermohaline circulation, and that it may set the time-scales for various climate oscilla- tions. Although the slow pace and persistence of oceanic variations give hope to long-range prediction, there still exist large uncer- tainties in climate predictability. Presently available observations and models are generally inadequate for studying and predicting long-term climate changes. However, some short-term fluctuations such as ENSO have been well studied and shown to be highly predictable even with simplified models.