“…Moreover, a weakening of the Atlantic Hadley and Walker circulations and an eastward shift of the latter (Philander, 1989;Klein et al, 1999;Wang, 2006) are associated with higher Pacific SSTs. Furthermore, a reduction in equatorial Atlantic rainfall (Saravanan and Chang, 2000;Chiang and Sobel, 2002), a lagged SST increase caused by a warmer troposphere, and reduced latent and sensible heat losses due to weaker trade winds and a reduction in cloudiness (Curtis and Hastenrath, 1995;Enfield and Mayer, 1997;Klein et al, 1999;Saravanan and Chang, 2000;Huang, 2002) were found during El Niño. The reduction in cloudiness leads to changes in radiation fluxes due to higher absorption of solar radiation by the ocean, which in turn increases the mean tropical Atlantic SST (Curtis and Hastenrath, 1995;Klein et al, 1999), strengthening the positive SST feedback between the Pacific and the Atlantic.…”