Coupled ocean‐atmosphere response to north tropical Atlantic SST: Tropical Atlantic dipole and ENSO

The coupled ocean‐atmosphere response to changes of the north tropical Atlantic (NTA) SST is investigated using a coupled ocean‐atmosphere general circulation model. The model explicitly demonstrates that a NTA SST anomaly can organize an inter‐hemispheric SST dipole in boreal spring over both the tropical Atlantic and eastern tropical Pacific primarily through a coupled wind‐evaporative‐SST (WES) feedback. While the tropical Atlantic dipole eventually decays in summer and fall, the eastern tropical Pacific dipole subsequently evolves into an ENSO‐like pattern through the seasonal migration of the ITCZ and coupled ocean‐atmosphere feedbacks.