A Role for the Tropical Pacific

What are the origins of past, present, and future climate change? In his Perspective, Stocker discusses ways in which the climate system can act like a seesaw, as the high northern latitudes push and pull against the Southern Hemisphere to create abrupt shifts. Stocker briefly discusses a report in the same issue by Steig et al., showing that Northern and Southern Hemisphere climate shifts act in synchrony. The Perspective by Cane looks at the role of the tropics in paleoclimate. Recent observations and model calculations indicate that effects of climate change in the tropical latitudes merit a closer look.