Southern Hemisphere Atmosphere Wavenumber 4 driven Marine Heat Waves and Marine Cool Spells

Abstract When SST anomalies are defined with respect to a changing baseline and normalised by their 90th percentile, the Tasman Sea is one of the southern hemisphere hotspots of marine heat waves (MHW) and marine cool spells (MCS). There is little evidence that MHW or MCS are increasing in either frequency or intensity, although the duration of MHW has increased from 8 d four decades ago to 26 d now. On average, Tasman Sea MHW/MCS co-occur with MHW/MCS in the Atlantic, Indian, and eastern-Pacific Oceans, in a wavenumber 4 (W4) pattern. Canonical MHW and MCS show they are likely driven by a stalling of the eastward propagation of a W4 atmospheric wave. During MHW, this slow down leads to near-stationary anomalously high and low air pressure areas driving anomalous north-easterly winds over the Tasman Sea. During MCS, similar a slow-down occurs, but shifted by one-half wavelength zonally.