Pacific Centennial Oscillation is a

climate oscillation Climate variability includes all the variations in the climate that last longer than individual weather events, whereas the term climate change only refers to those variations that persist for a longer period of time, typically decades or more ...

predicted by some

climate model Numerical climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the important drivers of climate, including atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the c ...

s. In the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

, variability in

sea surface temperature Sea surface temperature (SST), or ocean surface temperature, is the ocean temperature close to the surface. The exact meaning of ''surface'' varies according to the measurement method used, but it is between and below the sea surface. Air mas ...

s is an important influence on precipitation regimens in the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

and how this variability changes in response to anthropogenic climate change (

El Nino EL, El or el may refer to: Religion * El (deity), a Semitic word for "God" People * EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer * El DeBarge, music artist * El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...

-like or

La Nina LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note * "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on Figure 8 ( ...

-like) may determine the outcome of climate change. The sea surface temperature patterns may fluctuate over thousands or millions of years and determining trends and patterns from observational data is difficult. Several climate models have shown the existence of a centennial scale cycle in

temperatures, with fluctuations of about and most temperature changes concentrated below the surface of the Western Pacific. The predicted effects have some similarities to El Nino Southern Oscillation and may be responsible for recent

-like trends in Pacific Ocean temperature patterns and trends in the east–west gradient of Pacific sea surface temperatures from 1900 forward; in one climate model the Pacific Centennial Oscillation drives long

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

s in the Southwestern United States such as the 2011–2017 California drought. The Pacific Centennial Oscillation cycle however might be spurious, a model artifact. Later research has shown the possibility that centennial cycles in the Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature structure can be a consequence of an overly long Pacific cold tongue, although genuine centennial cycles in nature cannot be completely ruled out and has been re-proposed to explain centennial droughts in the Southwestern United States.

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pacific Centennial Oscillation Regional climate effects Climate modeling