Fig. 5: Thermal state and hypothetical meridional and zonal ocean–atmospheric circulation in the Pacific under precession minimum (Pmin) and maximum (Pmax) conditions.
a Cross-section of CESM-simulated annual mean temperature (color shading, °C) and salinity (contour lines) differences between precession minimum and precession maximum in the WPWP along 160°E; b composite difference (°C) of temperature along the 24–25 σ isopycnal surface during Pmin relative to the 300-kyr climatological mean from CESM simulation; c and d show the Pacific ocean–atmospheric circulation during Pmin and Pmax, respectively. The ENSO-like settings refer to the La Niña event in 2010 (c) and the El Niño event in 2015 (d), which were collected and made freely available by the International Argo Program and the national programs that contributed to it (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu, http://argo.jcommops.org). SEC and EUC represent the southern equatorial current and equatorial undercurrent, respectively. Color shading represents water temperature (°C), and the thickness of lines represents the strength of circulations.
