The interactions among the tropical Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean basins are increasingly recognized as a key factor in understanding climate variability on interannual to decadal timescales. While recent years have seen progress toward understanding tropical basin interactions, much remains to be learned. This includes a deeper understanding of the mechanisms, the preferred pathways, and the potential benefits for seasonal-to-decadal prediction. In order to make progress in these areas the CLIVAR Research Focus on Tropical Basin Interaction (TBI) is organizing a workshop that will bring together scientists with a broad range of expertise. The objectives of this workshop are as follows:
- Provide an overview of the current scientific understanding of TBI.
- Identify knowledge gaps and shortcoming of current modeling approaches, as well as new observations, including paleo-proxies, that would contribute to a better understanding of TBI.
- Develop an experimental protocol for coordinated model sensitivity tests to advance the understanding of TBI and, in particular, its potential role in seasonal-to-decadal prediction. This will form the basis for a set of coordinated GCM experiments. The RF TBI will solicit the participation of modeling centers and research groups in these experiments.
- Discuss novel approaches for studying interaction among the tropical basins, including conceptual models, machine learning, and proxy data.