Most studies have adopted incremental scenarios of constant changes throughout the year (e.g., Terjung et al., 1984; Rosenzweig et al., 1996), but some have introduced seasonal and
spatial variations in the changes (e.g., Whetton et al., 1993; Rosenthal et al., 1995) and others have
examined arbitrary changes in interannual, within - month and diurnal variability as well as changes in the mean (e.g., Williams et al., 1988; Mearns et al., 1992; Semenov and Porter, 1995; Mearns et al., 1996).
By
examining the
spatial pattern of both types of climate
variation, the scientists found that the anthropogenic global warming signal was relatively spatially uniform over the tropical oceans and thus would not have a large effect on the atmospheric circulation, whereas the PDO shift in the 1990s consisted of warming in the tropical west Pacific and cooling in the subtropical and east tropical Pacific, which would enhance the existing sea surface temperature difference and thus intensify the circulation.