Atmospheric Response to Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies in the Mid-latitude Oceans: A Brief Review

Atmospheric response to mid-latitude sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies is a long-standing and perplexing problem. There have been extensive studies on the issue of atmospheric response to mid-latitude SST anomalies from observational, theoretical, and modelling perspectives. This paper serves as a brief review focusing on large-scale SST anomalies. Here, convincing new observational evidence and modelling results are presented, and the process of noticing the importance of storm track and oceanic fronts is introduced. It has now been established that the atmospheric response to mid-latitude SST anomalies is largely controlled by the response of the storm track and that among the components of a mid-latitude SST anomaly, the disturbance to oceanic fronts plays a crucial role in simulating a significant storm track response.