Niño4 as a Key Region for the Interannual Variability of the Western Pacific Warm Pool

The Western Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP) plays an important role in the global climate through modulating deep convections, ENSO, monsoon onsets, etc. Due to the vast spatial range and huge heat storage of the WPWP, near‐real‐time monitoring of its three‐dimensional variations remains challenging. Based on Argo observations and three reanalysis data sets, we find that the Niño4 sea surface temperature (SST) index captures the interannual variability of the WPWP well. The Niño4 SST can explain approximately half of the variance of the WPWP heat content and almost all the variance of the east‐west migration of the WPWP. An assessment of 31 CMIP5 models also reveals that models with larger interannual spectral powers and amplitudes of the Niño4 SST tend to simulate larger variations in the heat content and east‐west migration of the WPWP. A surface heat budget analysis further shows that the Niño4 SST and WPWP are physically connected through basin‐scale horizontal advections of mean temperatures by anomalous horizontal currents, which dominate the interannual variations of both the Niño4 SST and WPWP. Our results indicate that the Niño4 SST can efficiently estimate the interannual WPWP changes and a reliable predictor of the onset time of the South China Sea summer monsoon and Bay of Bengal summer monsoon, without the need to calculate the eastern boundary location and heat content of the WPWP. Moreover, a better simulation of the SST and horizontal currents in the Niño4 region can help to reduce model bias when reproducing the WPWP's interannual variabilities. Key Points The Niño4 SST serves as an efficient estimator to evaluate the interannual variabilities of the heat content and zonal migration of WPWP Intermodel differences in the interannual variability of the WPWP are significantly coupled with those of the Niño4 SST The Niño4 SST index is more convenient for representing the WPWP's zonal migration and qualitatively predicting the SCSSM and BOBSM onsets