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Updated: Mar 29, 2026

Investigating the Relationship between Sea Surface Chlorophyll and Major Features of the South China Sea with Satellite Information
Published on: June 13, 2020
Dynamical excitation of the tropical Pacific Ocean and ENSO variability by Little Ice Age cooling
Gerald T Rustic1, Athanasios Koutavas2, Thomas M Marchitto3
1Department of Engineering Science and Physics, College of Staten Island, City University of New York, Staten Island, NY 10314, USA. Doctoral Program in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY 10016, USA. grustic@ldeo.columbia.edu.
Abstract:
Tropical Pacific Ocean dynamics during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and the Little Ice Age (LIA) are poorly characterized due to a lack of evidence from the eastern equatorial Pacific. We reconstructed sea surface temperature, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) activity, and the tropical Pacific zonal gradient for the past millennium from Galápagos ocean sediments. We document a mid-millennium shift (MMS) in ocean-atmosphere circulation around 1500-1650 CE, from a state with dampened ENSO and strong zonal gradient to one with amplified ENSO and weak gradient. The MMS coincided with the deepest LIA cooling and was probably caused by a southward shift of the intertropical convergence zone. The peak of the MCA (900-1150 CE) was a warm period in the eastern Pacific, contradicting the paradigm of a persistent La Niña pattern.
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