Global surface temperature changes exhibit considerable spatial variations. Non-uniform surface warming patterns evolve across a range of timescales under both external forcings and internal variability, driven by local and remote physical processes. Over recent decades, the observed surface warming pattern features unprecedented cooling trends in the tropical eastern Pacific and the Southern Ocean, which fall largely outside of the range of climate model simulations. The discrepancies in recent tropical warming patterns have broad implications for regional and global climate signals (such as precipitation, circulation, and climate sensitivity), yet their formations remain unclear, posing great challenges for constraining their future evolution and associated climate impacts. This session invites observational, modeling, and paleoclimate studies on the mechanisms, impacts and projections of global surface warming patterns. Topics include but are not limited to forced changes in the coupled system, low-frequency internal variability, tropical inter-basin interactions, tropical-extratropical teleconnections, and pattern effects.

• A - Atmospheric Sciences
• OS - Ocean Sciences