Sources of global warming of the upper ocean on decadal period scales

[1] Recent studies find global climate variability in the upper ocean and lower atmosphere during the twentieth century dominated by quasi-biennial, interannual, quasi-decadal and interdecadal signals. The quasi-decadal signal in upper ocean temperature undergoes global warming/cooling of ∼0.1°C, similar to that occurring with the interannual signal (i.e., El Niño–Southern Oscillation), both signals dominated by global warming/cooling in the tropics. From the National Centers for Environmental Prediction troposphere reanalysis and Scripps Institution of Oceanography upper ocean temperature reanalysis we examine the quasi-decadal global tropical diabatic heat storage (DHS) budget from 1975 to 2000. We find the anomalous DHS warming tendency of 0.3–0.9 W m⁻² driven principally by a downward global tropical latent-plus-sensible heat flux anomaly into the ocean, overwhelming the tendency by weaker upward shortwave-minus-longwave heat flux anomaly to drive an anomalous DHS cooling tendency. During the peak quasi-decadal warming the estimated dissipation of DHS anomaly of 0.2–0.5 W m⁻² into the deep ocean and a similar loss to the overlying atmosphere through air-sea heat flux anomaly are balanced by a decrease in the net poleward Ekman heat advection out of the tropics of 0.4–0.7 W m⁻². This scenario is nearly the opposite of that accounting for global tropical warming during the El Niño. These diagnostics confirm that even though the global quasi-decadal signal is phase-locked to the 11-year signal in the Sun's surface radiative forcing of ∼0.1 W m⁻², the anomalous global tropical DHS tendency cannot be driven by it directly.