Tropical Antarctic Teleconnections

There are very distinct connections between tropical and Antarctic climates, particularly over the South Pacific and South Atlantic with the West Antarctic/Antarctic Peninsula regions, but these are not fully explored. For example, atmospheric wavetrains show spatial and temporal (seasonal, interannual) variations in both regions.

All these wave variations have important roles in the tropical-Antarctic relationships including, for example, the one between climate and sea ice extent. Coupling of tropical forcing with the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) also impacts the weather and climate throughout the Southern Hemisphere. For example, extreme weather events in subtropical South America result from interactions between the tropical and Antarctic regions.  TATE aims to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of tropical-Antarctic teleconnections.

The goals of the TATE AG are to:

1. increase discussion and collaboration to explore tropical and polar weather and climate interactions, carrying out at least one interdisciplinary workshop;
2. investigate the tropical forcing of the atmospheric circulation in the present and in the recent past (the last 200 years based on proxy records such shallow ice core studies);
3. explore the air-sea ice coupled systems and their relation to weather and climate of the tropics and subtropics, including interactions with the monsoons systems;
4. conduct case studies on the relation between complex weather and climate patterns inthe South Atlantic, Indian and Pacific regions and the Southern Ocean sea ice cover, andhow they are connected to natural modes of climatic variability (e.g., ENSO, SAM, PSA,PDO) or anthropogenic-induced changes;
5. organize a session at the XXXV SCAR (Davos, 2018) exploring the tropical polar teleconnections (to be carried out together with IASC);
6. produce at least one special volume of articles on the tropical polar teleconnections.