| Pacific Decadal Oscillation |
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| climatology | |
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The Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) is a similar pattern, with a cycle of 15–30 years, but affects both the north and south Pacific. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation was named by Steven R. Hare , who noticed it while studying Salmon production patterns. Simultaneously the PDO climate pattern was also found by Yuan Zhang . The two groups described the patterns in 1997 (Mantua et al., 1997). The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean , north of 20° N. During a "warm", or "positive", phase, the west Pacific becomes cool and part of the eastern ocean warms. The mechanism by which the pattern lasts over several years has not been identified; one suggestion is that a thin layer of warm water during summer may shield deeper cold waters, while another is that Solar Activity is not affected by seasonal variations. A PDO signal has been reconstructed to 1661 through tree-ring chronologies in the Baja California area. coast.]] REGIME SHIFTS Although there are several patterns of behavior, the most significant one seems to be in regime shifts between "warm" and "cool" patterns which last 20 to 30 years.
In all liklihood, these regimes shifts result from random noise processes. In all cases in the 1900's, PDO "regime shifts" were related to similar changes in the Tropical ocean. RELATED PATTERNS
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