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Tropical expansion by ocean swing

The tropical belt has become wider over the past decades, but climate models fall short of capturing the full rate of the expansion. The latest analysis of climate simulations suggests that a long-term swing of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is the main missing cause from the coupled climate models.

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Figure 1: Asian pollution and the tropical belt.

© PACIFIC PRESS SERVICE/ALAMY

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Correspondence to Jian Lu.

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Lu, J. Tropical expansion by ocean swing. Nature Geosci 7, 250–251 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2124

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