Abstract
Marine heatwaves can interact across ocean basins through atmospheric teleconnections, but such inter-basin links remain poorly understood. Here we show that boreal spring and summer marine heatwaves in the Caribbean Sea are significantly connected to marine heatwaves in the Indian Ocean during the preceding winter. Using observational data and climate model simulations, we identify that boreal winter Indian Ocean marine heatwaves trigger atmospheric convection, generating an eastward-propagating Indo-Pacific-Atlantic Rossby wave train. This wave train alters the regional Hadley circulation and renders the overlying atmosphere warm, moist, and stable over the Caribbean Sea, reducing latent heat loss from the ocean, driving sea surface warming and promoting the intensification of marine heatwaves. These findings reveal a robust teleconnection pathway that allows climate signals from one basin to amplify marine heatwaves in another.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Yazhou Zhang, Yina Diao, Yang Zhao, Mian Zhu, and Hongqiang Dong for their help. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions, which greatly improved this manuscript.
Funding
J.L. and Z.L. acknowledge support for the research of this work from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Project (42288101), Laoshan Laboratory (No. LSKJ202202600), and Shandong Natural Science Foundation Project (ZR2019ZD12).
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Li, Z., Li, J. Spring–Summer Caribbean Sea marine heatwaves tied to previous Winter Indian Ocean marine heatwaves. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73130-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73130-z
