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While the emergence of Pacific scholars has contributed to the development of Pacific methodologies, they have not fully addressed the broader academic context in New Zealand. Appreciating the importance of diverse cultural values and beliefs among Pacific peoples, doing research with them must be honoured and acknowledged for its uniqueness. The Samoan cultural concept named Tofā Māmāo (in-depth knowledge) is a potential theoretical approach to guide Pacific research. This study explored Tofā Māmāo from the perspective of paramount chiefs and its theoretical position within academia. The talanoa (dialogue) approach was employed during the one-on-one interviews to collect the data. The findings revealed that the Tofā Māmāo is defined metaphorically as a Pearl of Wisdom and a principal philosophical element in the fa'a-Samoa (Samoan culture). Its principles are suitable for Pacific research and enrich the whole process. It symbolises the ability to unlock an archive of knowledge that has existed for generations. It defines truth through oral traditions which justifies its positioning when doing research. While Pacific metaphors and proverbs are elements of interpreting the meaning of the Pacific people's worldview, the significance of the Tofā Māmāo has a primary potential to inform the theoretical stance of the research.

This article seeks to explain China's seemingly preferential treatment of Japan during the Trump administration in the U.S.—in comparison to its harsh, \"wolf warrior\" style of diplomacy toward other countries that challenged its core interests—by examining the perspective of the Chinese government and policy elites with regard to Japan.

The Central and South Pacific have significant wave energy resources distributed through the region that are currently not being explored. Even though the wave energy resource in the Pacific has been studied, there is limited knowledge on the potential obstacles when inserting this new energy source into a unique and unexplored environment. Pacific Island countries (PICs) have distinctive characteristics that can become barriers to this technology, especially considering that local coastal and marine systems are fundamental for subsistence and local development. Thus, the success of a project relies on local acceptance. The current study developed an integrative conceptual framework for the PICs (ICFPICs) that derived from the integration of the elements of a political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal (PESTEL) structured approach and further combined with a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) approach to create a matrix that included relevant internal and external factors influencing a project. Four islands were analyzed through the ICFPICs to demonstrate the varying characteristics and challenges in the Pacific environment; the islands were Tubuai (French Polynesia), Viti Levu (Fiji), Rarotonga (Cook Islands), and ‘Eua (Tonga). Applying the ICFPICs to each island shows that Tubuai has significant technological issues, Rarotonga has mostly economic issues, Viti Levu is the most developed island but also has several potential issues in the social sphere, while ‘Eua has the fewest issues and is a viable candidate for further analysis. The ICFPICs can be used by decision makers, project developers, and stakeholders to recognize probable barriers when bringing wave energy technologies to the PICs and make informed decisions during the pre-feasibility stage.

Purpose of Review This paper reviews recent progress in understanding of the North Pacific Meridional Mode (NPMM) and its influence on the timing, magnitude, flavor, and intensity of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Recent Findings The NPMM is a seasonally evolving mode of coupled climate variability and features several distinct opportunities to influence ENSO. They include: (1) A Wind-Evaporation-SST (WES) feedback-driven propagation of surface anomalies onto the equator during boreal spring, (2) Trade Wind Charging (TWC) of equatorial subsurface heat content by NPMM-related surface wind stress curl anomalies in boreal winter and early spring, (3) The reflection of NPMM-forced ocean Rossby waves off the western boundary in boreal summer, and (4) A Gill-like atmospheric response associated with anomalous deep convection in boreal summer and fall. The South Pacific Meridional Mode (SPMM) also significantly modulates ENSO, and its interactions with the NPMM may contribute to ENSO diversity. Together, the NPMM and SPMM are also important components of Tropical Pacific Decadal Variability; however, future research is needed to improve understanding on these timescales. Summary Since 1950, the boreal spring NPMM skillfully predicts about 15–30% of observed winter ENSO variability. Improving simulated NPMM-ENSO relationships in forecast models may reduce ENSO forecasting error. Recent studies have begun to explore the influence of anthropogenic climate change on the NPMM-ENSO relationship; however, the results are inconclusive.

The climate impacts of the observed Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) are investigated using the GFDL CM2.1 and the NCAR CESM1 coupled climate models. The model North Atlantic sea surface temperatures are restored to fixed anomalies corresponding to an estimate of the internally driven component of the observed AMV. Both models show that during boreal summer the AMV alters the Walker circulation and generates precipitation anomalies over the whole tropical belt. A warm phase of the AMV yields reduced precipitation over the western United States, drier conditions over the Mediterranean basin, and wetter conditions over northern Europe. During boreal winter, the AMV modulates by a factor of about 2 the frequency of occurrence of El Niño and La Niña events. This response is associated with anomalies over the Pacific that project onto the interdecadal Pacific oscillation pattern (i.e., Pacific decadal oscillation–like anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere and a symmetrical pattern in the Southern Hemisphere). This winter response is a lagged adjustment of the Pacific Ocean to the AMV forcing in summer. Most of the simulated global-scale impacts are driven by the tropical part of the AMV, except for the winter North Atlantic Oscillation–like response over the North Atlantic–European region, which is driven by both the subpolar and tropical parts of the AMV. The teleconnections between the Pacific and Atlantic basins alter the direct North Atlantic local response to the AMV, which highlights the importance of using a global coupled framework to investigate the climate impacts of the AMV. The similarity of the twomodel responses gives confidence that impacts described in this paper are robust.

The first two leading modes of the North Pacific atmospheric variability, the Aleutian Low (AL) and North Pacific Oscillation (NPO), in boreal winter and their relations to the North American and Eurasian surface temperature, El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Victoria Mode (VM) are explored in 20 coupled climate models which participated in the sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The historical simulations of these models can well reproduce spatial structures and amplitudes of the winter AL and NPO, as well as their associations with North American and Eurasian surface air temperatures. The close connections of the winter AL with ENSO and PDO, as well as the linkage between the NPO and VM could also be well simulated. However, most of the models lack the capability in simulating the impact of the winter ENSO on the NPO. This deficiency is mainly attributed to westward shifts of the ENSO-related sea surface temperature and precipitation anomalies in the tropics and ENSO-induced atmospheric teleconnections over the North Pacific in the models. Spread in the ENSO’s amplitude also contributes partly to the diversity of the ENSO–NPO relation among the models. Under the SSP2-RCP4.5 forced climate change projection, projected changes in the amplitudes and centers of the AL and NPO exhibit large uncertainties across the 20 models. The close connections of the AL with ENSO and PDO, and the NPO with VM are still robust in the warming climate. Most models project an increase (a decrease) in the AL–PDO (NPO–VM) relationship. However, there exists a large uncertainty in the projected changes of the AL–ENSO relationship, which is partly attributed to the large divergence in the projected changes of the ENSO’s amplitude among the models.

In recent decades, the subtropical edges of Earth’s Hadley circulation have shifted poleward. Some studies have concluded that this observed tropical expansion is occurring more rapidly than predicted by global climate models. However, recent modeling studies have shown that internal variability can account for a large fraction of the observed circulation trends, at least in an annual-mean, zonal-mean framework. This study extends these previous results by examining the seasonal and regional characteristics of the recent poleward expansion of the Hadley circulation using seven reanalysis datasets, sea level pressure observations, and surface wind observations. The circulation has expanded the most poleward during summer and fall in both hemispheres, with more zonally asymmetric circulation trends occurring in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). The seasonal and regional characteristics of these observed trends generally fall within the range of trends predicted by climate models for the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and in most cases, the magnitude of the observed trends does not exceed the range of interdecadal trends in the models’ control runs, which arise exclusively from internal variability. One exception occurs during NH fall when large observed poleward shifts in the atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic sector exceed nearly all trends projected by models. While most recent NH circulation trends are consistent with a change in phase of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO), the observed circulation trends over the North Atlantic instead reflect 1) large natural variability unrelated to the PDO and/or 2) a climate forcing (or the circulation response to that forcing) that is not properly captured by models.

Frequency and duration of floods are analyzed using the global flood database of the Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO) to explore evidence of trends during 1985–2015 at global and latitudinal scales. Three classes of flood duration (i.e., short: 1–7, moderate: 8–20, and long: 21 days and above) are also considered for this analysis. The nonparametric Mann–Kendall trend analysis is used to evaluate three hypotheses addressing potential monotonic trends in the frequency of flood, moments of duration, and frequency of specific flood duration types. We also evaluated if trends could be related to large-scale atmospheric teleconnections using a generalized linear model framework. Results show that flood frequency and the tails of the flood duration (long duration) have increased at both the global and the latitudinal scales. In the tropics, floods have increased 4-fold since the 2000s. This increase is 2.5-fold in the north midlatitudes. However, much of the trend in frequency and duration of the floods can be placed within the long-term climate variability context since the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, and Pacific Decadal Oscillation were the main atmospheric teleconnections explaining this trend. There is no monotonic trend in the frequency of short-duration floods across all the global and latitudinal scales. There is a significant increasing trend in the annual median of flood durations globally and each latitudinal belt, and this trend is not related to these teleconnections. While the DFO data come with a certain level of epistemic uncertainty due to imprecision in the estimation of floods, overall, the analysis provides insights for understanding the frequency and persistence in hydrologic extremes and how they relate to changes in the climate, organization of global and local dynamical systems, and country-scale socioeconomic factors.

Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans were suggested to explain inter-annual variability of tropical cyclone (TC) activity over the western North Pacific (WNP). Here we show that the influences of these “trans-basin” SST anomalies in the three oceans can be collectively understood via two leading modes of variability of WNP subtropical high (WNPSH). The first mode, which is forced by SST anomalies in the eastern-central Pacific and tropical Atlantic, can shift TC formation locations southeastward/northwestward, but has insignificant influence on the total TC genesis number, albeit affects the TC tracks, total number of tropical storm days, and power dissipation index (PDI). The second mode, which is a coupled ocean–atmosphere mode associated with a dipole SST anomaly in the Indo-Pacific warm pool, has a significant control on the total TC genesis number. A set of physics-based empirical models is built to predict the two WNPSH modes and TC activity (genesis number, tropical storm days and PDI) in the peak TC season (July–September) with preceding season trans-basin SST predictors. The predictions capture very well the inter-annual variabilities of the WNPSH and reasonably well the variability of WNP TC activity. These results thus establish a unified framework to understand and forecast the inter-annual variability in TC activity over the WNP.

Melt inclusion data from primitive arc basalts from Mexico and Kamchatka show clear positive correlations of \"fluid mobile element\"/H2O ratios with the Cl/H2O ratio, suggesting that the trace element content of subduction zone fluids is strongly enhanced by complexing with chloride. This effect is observed for large-ion lithophile (LILE) elements, (e.g., Rb and Sr), but also for the light rare earth elements (REE, e.g., La and Ce) as well as for U. The correlations of these elements with Cl/H2O cannot be explained by the addition of sediment melts or slab melts to the mantle source, since Cl has no effect on the solubility or partitioning of these elements in silicate melt systems. On the other hand, the observed relationship of trace element abundance with Cl is consistent with a large body of experimental data showing greatly enhanced partitioning into aqueous fluid upon addition of chloride. Accordingly, it appears that a dilute, Cl-bearing aqueous fluid is the main carrier of LILE, light REE, and U from the slab to the source of melting in arcs. Moreover, elevated Ce/H2O ratios clearly correlate with fluid salinity and therefore are not suitable as a \"slab geothermometer\". From a synopsis of experimental and melt inclusion data, it is suggested that the importance of sediment or slab melting in the generation of arc magmas is likely overestimated, while the effects of trace element scavenging from the mantle wedge may be underestimated. Moreover, establishing reliable data sets for the fluid/mineral partition coefficients of trace elements as a function of pressure, temperature, and salinity requires additional efforts, since most of the commonly used experimental strategies have severe drawbacks and potential pitfalls.