Cai Wenju

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Cai
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Wenju
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  • Preprint
    Enhanced warming over the global subtropical western boundary currents
    ( 2011-11) Wu, Lixin ; Cai, Wenju ; Zhang, Liping ; Nakamura, Hisashi ; Timmermann, Axel ; Joyce, Terrence M. ; McPhaden, Michael J. ; Alexander, Michael A. ; Qiu, Bo ; Visbeck, Martin ; Chang, Ping ; Giese, Benjamin
    Subtropical western boundary currents are warm, fast flowing currents that form on the western side of ocean basins. They carry warm tropical water to the mid-latitudes and vent large amounts of heat and moisture to the atmosphere along their paths, affecting atmospheric jet streams and mid-latitude storms, as well as ocean carbon uptake. The possibility that these highly energetic and nonlinear currents might change under greenhouse gas forcing has raised significant concerns, but detecting such changes is challenging owing to limited observations. Here, using reconstructed sea surface temperature datasets and newly developed century-long ocean and atmosphere reanalysis products, we find that the post-1900 surface ocean warming rate over the path of these currents is two to three times faster than the global mean surface ocean warming rate. The accelerated warming is associated with a synchronous poleward shift and/or intensification of global subtropical western boundary currents in conjunction with a systematic change in winds over both hemispheres. This enhanced warming may reduce ocean's ability to absorb anthropogenic carbon dioxide over these regions. However, uncertainties in detection and attribution of these warming trends remain, pointing to a need for a long-term monitoring network of the global western boundary currents and their extensions.
  • Article
    Ocean climate observing requirements in support of climate research and climate information
    (Frontiers Media, 2019-07-31) Stammer, Detlef ; Bracco, Annalisa ; AchutaRao, Krishna ; Beal, Lisa M. ; Bindoff, Nathaniel L. ; Braconnot, Pascale ; Cai, Wenju ; Chen, Dake ; Collins, Matthew ; Danabasoglu, Gokhan ; Dewitte, Boris ; Farneti, Riccardo ; Fox-Kemper, Baylor ; Fyfe, John ; Griffies, Stephen M. ; Jayne, Steven R. ; Lazar, Alban ; Lengaigne, Matthieu ; Lin, Xiaopei ; Marsland, Simon ; Minobe, Shoshiro ; Monteiro, Pedro M. S. ; Robinson, Walter ; Roxy, Mathew Koll ; Rykaczewski, Ryan R. ; Speich, Sabrina ; Smith, Inga J. ; Solomon, Amy ; Storto, Andrea ; Takahashi, Ken ; Toniazzo, Thomas ; Vialard, Jérôme
    Natural variability and change of the Earth’s climate have significant global societal impacts. With its large heat and carbon capacity and relatively slow dynamics, the ocean plays an integral role in climate, and provides an important source of predictability at seasonal and longer timescales. In addition, the ocean provides the slowly evolving lower boundary to the atmosphere, driving, and modifying atmospheric weather. Understanding and monitoring ocean climate variability and change, to constrain and initialize models as well as identify model biases for improved climate hindcasting and prediction, requires a scale-sensitive, and long-term observing system. A climate observing system has requirements that significantly differ from, and sometimes are orthogonal to, those of other applications. In general terms, they can be summarized by the simultaneous need for both large spatial and long temporal coverage, and by the accuracy and stability required for detecting the local climate signals. This paper reviews the requirements of a climate observing system in terms of space and time scales, and revisits the question of which parameters such a system should encompass to meet future strategic goals of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), with emphasis on ocean and sea-ice covered areas. It considers global as well as regional aspects that should be accounted for in designing observing systems in individual basins. Furthermore, the paper discusses which data-driven products are required to meet WCRP research and modeling needs, and ways to obtain them through data synthesis and assimilation approaches. Finally, it addresses the need for scientific capacity building and international collaboration in support of the collection of high-quality measurements over the large spatial scales and long time-scales required for climate research, bridging the scientific rational to the required resources for implementation.
  • Preprint
    Global Ocean Summit : a forum for institutional coordination of global ocean observations
    ( 2014-11) Cai, Wenju ; Avery, Susan K. ; Leinen, Margaret S. ; Lee, Kenneth ; Lin, Xiaopei ; Visbeck, Martin
    A sustainable global ocean observation system requires timely implementation of a global ocean observation framework. The recent Qingdao Global Ocean Summit offers an effective mechanism for a coherent institutional response to emerging scientific and societal drivers, and for promoting the capacity building in developing economies that is essential for increasing the value and broadening the funding base of the observation system.
  • Article
    Southern Ocean warming and its climatic impacts
    (Elsevier, 2023-05-12) Cai, Wenju ; Gao, Libao ; Luo, Yiyong ; Li, Xichen ; Zheng, Xiaotong ; Zhang, Xuebin ; Cheng, Xuhua ; Jia, Fan ; Purich, Ariaan ; Santoso, Agus ; Du, Yan ; Holland, David M. ; Shi, Jia-Rui ; Xiang, Baoqiang ; Xie, Shang-Ping
    The Southern Ocean has warmed substantially, and up to early 21st century, Antarctic stratospheric ozone depletion and increasing atmospheric CO2 have conspired to intensify Southern Ocean warming. Despite a projected ozone recovery, fluxes to the Southern Ocean of radiative heat and freshwater from enhanced precipitation and melting sea ice, ice shelves, and ice sheets are expected to increase, as is a Southern Ocean westerly poleward intensification. The warming has far-reaching climatic implications for melt of Antarctic ice shelf and ice sheet, sea level rise, and remote circulations such as the intertropical convergence zone and tropical ocean-atmosphere circulations, which affect extreme weathers, agriculture, and ecosystems. The surface warm and freshwater anomalies are advected northward by the mean circulation and deposited into the ocean interior with a zonal-mean maximum at ∼45°S. The increased momentum and buoyancy fluxes enhance the Southern Ocean circulation and water mass transformation, further increasing the heat uptake. Complex processes that operate but poorly understood include interactive ice shelves and ice sheets, oceanic eddies, tropical-polar interactions, and impact of the Southern Ocean response on the climate change forcing itself; in particular, limited observations and low resolution of climate models hinder rapid progress. Thus, projection of Southern Ocean warming will likely remain uncertain, but recent community effort has laid a solid foundation for substantial progress.