Reinterpreting the thermocline feedback in the western-central equatorial Pacific and its relationship with the ENSO modulation

Vertical stratification changes at low frequency over the last decades are the largest in the western-central Pacific and have the potential to modify the balance between ENSO feedback processes. Here we show evidence of an increase in thermocline feedback in the western-central equatorial Pacific over the last 50 years, and in particular after the climate shift of 1976. It is demonstrated that the thermocline feedback becomes more effective due to the increased stratification in the vicinity of the mean thermocline. This leads to an increase in vertical advection variability twice as large as the increase resulting from the stronger ENSO amplitude (positive asymmetry) in the eastern Pacific that connects to the thermocline in the western-central Pacific through the basin-scale ‘tilt’ mode. Although the zonal advective feedback is dominant over the western-central equatorial Pacific, the more effective thermocline feedback allows for counteracting its warming (cooling) effect during warm (cold) events, leading to the reduced covariability between SST and thermocline depth anomalies in the NINO4 (160°E–150°W; 5°S–5°N) region after the 1976 climate shift. This counter-intuitive relationship between thermocline feedback strength as derived from the linear relationship between SST and thermocline fluctuations and stratification changes is also investigated in a long-term general circulation coupled model simulation. It is suggested that an increase in ENSO amplitude may lead to the decoupling between eastern and central equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies through its effect on stratification and thermocline feedback in the central-western Pacific.     

On the dependence of ENSO simulation on the coupled model mean state

Systematic model error remains a difficult problem for seasonal forecasting and climate predictions. An error in the mean state could affect the variability of the system. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the mean state on the properties of ENSO. A set of coupled decadal integrations have been conducted, where the mean state and its seasonal cycle have been modified by applying flux correction to the momentum-flux and a combination of heat and momentum fluxes. It is shown that correcting the mean state and the seasonal cycle improves the amplitude of SST inter-annual variability and also the penetration of the ENSO signal into the troposphere and the spatial distribution of the ENSO teleconnections are improved. An analysis of a multivariate PDF of ENSO shows clearly that the flux correction affects the mean, variance, skewness and tails of the distribution. The changes in the tails of the distribution are particularly noticeable in the case of precipitation, showing that without the flux correction the model is unable to reproduce the frequency of large events. For the inter-annual variability the momentum-flux correction alone has a large impact, while the additional heat-flux correction is important for the teleconnections. These results suggest that the current forecasts practices of removing the forecast bias a-posteriori or anomaly initialisation are by no means optimal, since they can not deal with the strong nonlinear interactions. A consequence of the results presented here is that the predictability on annual time-ranges could be higher than currently achieved. Whether or not the correction of the model mean state by some sort of flux correction leads to better forecasts needs to be addressed. In any case, flux correction may be a powerful tool for diagnosing coupled model errors and predictability studies.     

Sensitivity of an atmospheric general circulation model to prescribed SST changes: feedback effects associated with the simulation of cloud optical properties

This paper was presented at the International Conference on Modelling of Global Climate Change and Variability, held in Hamburg 11–15 September 1989 under the auspices of the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. Guest Editor for these papers is Dr. L. Dumenil     

Seasonal Evolution of Dominant Modes in South Pacific SST and Relationship with ENSO

A season-reliant empirical orthogonal function(S-EOF) analysis was applied to the seasonal mean SST anomalies(SSTAs) based on the HadISST1 dataset with linear trend removed at every grid point in the South Pacific(60.5-19.5 S,139.5 E-60.5 W) during the period 1979-2009.The spatiotemporal characteristics of the dominant modes and their relationships with ENSO were analyzed.The results show that there are two seasonally evolving dominant modes of SSTAs in the South Pacific with interannual and interdecadal variations;they account for nearly 40% of the total variance.Although the seasonal evolution of spatial patterns of the first S-EOF mode(S-EOF1) did not show remarkable propagation,it decays with season remarkably.The second S-EOF mode(S-EOF2) showed significant seasonal evolution and intensified with season,with distinct characteristics of eastward propagation of the negative SSTAs in southern New Zealand and positive SSTAs southeast of Australia.Both of these two modes have significant relationships with ENSO.These two modes correspond to the post-ENSO and ENSO turnabout years,respectively.The SEOF1 mode associated with the decay of the eastern Pacific(EP) and the central Pacific(CP) types of ENSO exhibited a more significant relationship with the EP/CP type of El Nin o than that with the EP/CP type of La Nin a.The S-EOF2 mode contacted with the EP type of El Nin o changing into the EP/CP type of La Nin a showed a more significant connection with the EP/CP type of La Nin a.     

Possible role of warm SST bias in the simulation of boreal summer monsoon in SINTEX-F2 coupled model

Reasonably realistic climatology of atmospheric and oceanic parameters over the Asian monsoon region is a pre-requisite for models used for monsoon studies. The biases in representing these features lead to problems in representing the strength and variability of Indian summer monsoon (ISM). This study attempts to unravel the ability of a state-of-the-art coupled model, SINTEX-F2, in simulating these characteristics of ISM. The coupled model reproduces the precipitation and circulation climatology reasonably well. However, the mean ISM is weaker than observed, as evident from various monsoon indices. A wavenumber–frequency spectrum analysis reveals that the model intraseasonal oscillations are also weaker-than-observed. One possible reason for the weaker-than-observed ISM arises from the warm bias, over the tropical oceans, especially over the equatorial western Indian Ocean, inherent in the model. This warm bias is not only confined to the surface layers, but also extends through most of the troposphere. As a result of this warm bias, the coupled model has too weak meridional tropospheric temperature gradient to drive a realistic monsoon circulation. This in turn leads to a weakening of the moisture gradient as well as the vertical shear of easterlies required for sustained northward propagation of rain band, resulting in weak monsoon circulation. It is also noted that the recently documented interaction between the interannual and intraseasonal variabilities of ISM through very long breaks (VLBs) is poor in the model. This seems to be related to the inability of the model in simulating the eastward propagating Madden–Julian oscillation during VLBs.     

Delayed Atmospheric Temperature Response to ENSO SST： Role of High SST and the Western Pacific

Tropical zonally symmetric atmospheric warming occurs during ENSO’s warm phase, and lags the equa- torial east Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) by 3–4 months. The role of the Indian and Atlantic oceans on the atmospheric delayed response has been pointed out by earlier studies. For 1951–2004, a regression analysis based on the observed SST data shows the western Pacific has a similarly important role as the Indian and Atlantic. Nevertheless, there is time mismatch of around 1–2 months between the zon...     

The impact of ENSO periodicity on North Pacific SST variability

The periodicity of ENSO in nature varies. Here we examine how changes in the frequency of ENSO impacts remote teleconnections in the North Pacific. The numerical experiments presented here are designed to simulate perfectly periodic ENSO in the tropical Pacific, and to enable the air–sea interaction in other regions (i.e., the North Pacific) via a simple mixed layer ocean model. The temporal evolution and spatial structure of the North Pacific SST teleconnection patterns are relatively insensitive to the frequency of ENSO, but the amplitude of the variability is sensitive. Specifically, the 2-year period ENSO experiment (P2) shows weak event-by-event consistency in the ENSO response mature pattern. This is because there is not enough time to damp the previously forced ENSO teleconnections (i.e., 1 year earlier). The 4-year period ENSO experiment (P4) has 1 year damping time before a successive ENSO event matures, so the structure of the response pattern is stably repeated. However, the event-by-event variance of anomaly magnitude, specifically responding to El Niño, is still larger than that in the 6-year ENSO experiment (P6), which has 2-year damping time between consecutive ENSO events. In addition, we tested whether the variability due to tropical remote forcing is linearly independent of the extratropical local variability. Statistical tests indicate that tropical remote forcing can constructively or destructively interfere with local variability in the North Pacific. Lastly, there is a non-linear rectification of the ENSO events that can be detected in the climatology.     

Impact of intra-daily SST variability on ENSO characteristics in a coupled model

This paper explores the impact of intra-daily Sea Surface Temperature (SST) variability on the tropical large-scale climate variability and differentiates it from the response of the system to the forcing of the solar diurnal cycle. Our methodology is based on a set of numerical experiments based on a fully global coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation in which we alter (1) the frequency at which the atmosphere sees the SST variations and (2) the amplitude of the SST diurnal cycle. Our results highlight the complexity of the scale interactions existing between the intra-daily and inter-annual variability of the tropical climate system. Neglecting the SST intra-daily variability results, in our CGCM, to a systematic decrease of 15% of El Ni?o—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) amplitude. Furthermore, ENSO frequency and skewness are also significantly modified and are in better agreement with observations when SST intra-daily variability is directly taken into account in the coupling interface of our CGCM. These significant modifications of the SST interannual variability are not associated with any remarkable changes in the mean state or the seasonal variability. They can therefore not be explained by a rectification of the mean state as usually advocated in recent studies focusing on the diurnal cycle and its impact. Furthermore, we demonstrate that SST high frequency coupling is systematically associated with a strengthening of the air-sea feedbacks involved in ENSO physics: SST/sea level pressure (or Bjerknes) feedback, zonal wind/heat content (or Wyrtki) feedback, but also negative surface heat flux feedbacks. In our model, nearly all these results (excepted for SST skewness) are independent of the amplitude of the SST diurnal cycle suggesting that the systematic deterioration of the air-sea coupling by a daily exchange of SST information is cascading toward the major mode of tropical variability, i.e. ENSO.     

ENSO stability in coupled climate models and its association with mean state

In this study, using the Bjerknes stability (BJ) index analysis, we estimate the overall linear El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) stability and the relative contribution of positive feedbacks and damping processes to the stability in historical simulations of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models. When compared with CMIP3 models, the ENSO amplitudes and the ENSO stability as estimated by the BJ index in the CMIP5 models are more converged around the observed, estimated from the atmosphere and ocean reanalysis data sets. The reduced diversity among models in the simulated ENSO stability can be partly attributed to the reduced spread of the thermocline feedback and Ekman feedback terms among the models. However, a systematic bias persists from CMIP3 to CMIP5. In other words, the majority of the CMIP5 models analyzed in this study still underestimate the zonal advective feedback, thermocline feedback and thermodynamic damping terms, when compared with those estimated from reanalysis. This discrepancy turns out to be related with a cold tongue bias in coupled models that causes a weaker atmospheric thermodynamical response to sea surface temperature changes and a weaker oceanic response (zonal currents and zonal thermocline slope) to wind changes.     

On the Tropical Atlantic SST warm bias in the Kiel Climate Model

Most of the current coupled general circulation models show a strong warm bias in the eastern Tropical Atlantic. In this paper, various sensitivity experiments with the Kiel Climate Model (KCM) are described. A largely reduced warm bias and an improved seasonal cycle in the eastern Tropical Atlantic are simulated in one particular version of KCM. By comparing the stable and well-tested standard version with the sensitivity experiments and the modified version, mechanisms contributing to the reduction of the eastern Atlantic warm bias are identified and compared to what has been proposed in literature. The error in the spring and early summer zonal winds associated with erroneous zonal precipitation seems to be the key mechanism, and large-scale coupled ocean?Catmosphere feedbacks play an important role in reducing the warm bias. Improved winds in boreal spring cause the summer cooling in the eastern Tropical Atlantic (ETA) via shoaling of the thermocline and increased upwelling, and hence reduced sea surface temperature (SST). Reduced SSTs in the summer suppress convection and favor the development of low-level cloud cover in the ETA region. Subsurface ocean structure is shown to be improved, and potentially influences the development of the bias. The strong warm bias along the southeastern coastline is related to underestimation of low-level cloud cover and the associated overestimation of surface shortwave radiation in the same region. Therefore, in addition to the primarily wind forced response at the equator both changes in surface shortwave radiation and outgoing longwave radiation contribute significantly to reduction of the warm bias from summer to fall.     

海温气候平均场的改变及其对ENSO事件划分的影响

比较了将于2003年1月投入我国海温监测业务使用的Reynolds海温1971－2000年气候平均场和原有系统中海温气候平均场的差别，并分析了7个关键区海温指数的变化，最后，以NINO3区海温指数为例，分析了对历史上厄尔尼诺和拉尼娜事件划分的差别。     

Influence of Springtime Atlantic SST on ENSO:Role of the Madden-Julian Oscillation

Increased evidence has shown the important role of Atlantic sea surface temperature(SST) in modulating the El Nio-Southern Oscillation(ENSO). Persistent anomalies of summer Madden-Julian Oscillation(MJO) act to link the Atlantic SST anomalies(SSTAs) to ENSO. The Atlantic SSTAs are strongly correlated with the persistent anomalies of summer MJO, and possibly affect MJO in two major ways. One is that an anomalous cyclonic(anticyclonic) circulation appears over the tropical Atlantic Ocean associated with positive(negative) SSTA in spring, and it intensifies(weakens) the Walker circulation. Equatorial updraft anomaly then appears over the Indian Ocean and the eastern Pacific Ocean, intensifying MJO activity over these regions. The other involves a high pressure(low pressure) anomaly associated with the North Atlantic SSTA tripole pattern that is transmitted to the mid-and low-latitudes by a circumglobal teleconnection pattern, leading to strong(weak) convective activity of MJO over the Indian Ocean. The above results offer new viewpoints about the process from springtime Atlantic SSTA signals to summertime atmospheric oscillation, and then to the MJO of tropical atmosphere affecting wintertime Pacific ENSO events, which connects different oceans.     

热带海表温度及北大西洋涛动与ENSO事件的相关分析

采用交叉小波变换方法分析了热带SST、NAO与ENSO事件之间的多时间尺度相关特征。结果表明,热带SST与ENSO事件在2～7年和30年以上尺度的周期振荡上存在着显著的同位相正相关,其中以4年尺度周期的方差贡献最大,时域中热带SST冷暖变化的时间与ENSO冷暖交替的时间一一对应;北大西洋SST与ENSO事件在4年和15年尺度周期振荡上表现为方差贡献较大的正相关;NAO与ENSO事件相关较弱,在2～7年和10～24年尺度上表现为负相关,而25年以上尺度为正相关,时域中NAO强弱变化与ENSO冷暖交替的对应关系并不完全一致。     

ENSO与南海SST关系的年代际变化

基于NOAA重建的海面温度（sea surface temperature, SST）资料和NCEP再分析大气资料,研究了ENSO（El Niño-Southern Oscillation）与南海SST关系的年代际变化。结果表明：ENSO影响南海SST的冬、夏季“双峰”现象发生了显著的年代际变化,即冬季的“峰值”自20世纪80年代显著减弱,而夏季的“峰值”稳定持续且在20世纪70年代之后增强;冬季“峰值”的减弱可能与冬季西北太平洋反气旋的年代际变化有关,夏季“峰值”的维持和增强可能与20世纪70年代之后印度洋SST“电容器”效应的增强有关。     

The Asymmetric Connection of SST in the Tasman Sea with Respect to the Opposite Phases of ENSO in Austral Summer

This study uses linear regression and composite analyses to identify a pronounced asymmetric connection of sea surface temperature (SST) in the Tasman Sea with the two opposite phases of El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) during austral summer. In El Ni?o years, the SST anomalies (SSTAs) in the Tasman Sea exhibit a dipolar pattern with weak warmth in the northwest and modest cooling in the southeast, while during La Ni?a years the SSTAs exhibit a basin-scale warmth with greater amplitude. Investigations into the underlying mechanism suggest that this asymmetry arises from a mechanism related to oceanic heat transport, specifically the anomalous Ekman meridional heat transport induced by the zonal wind stress anomalies, rather than the surface heat fluxes on the air-sea interface. Further analysis reveals that the asymmetry of oceanic heat transport between El Ni?o and La Ni?a years is driven by the asymmetric atmospheric circulation over the Tasman Sea stimulated by the asymmetric diabatic heating in the tropical Pacific between the two opposite ENSO phases.     

副热带北太平洋SST在ENSO冷暖位相转变中的作用

2015/2016年发生的极端El Ni?o事件,与1997/1998年El Ni?o事件具有可比拟的强度,但是2016年事件转变为弱La Ni?a,而1998年事件则为强La Ni?a。本文通过对比这两次极端El Ni?o事件,揭示其转变为不同强度La Ni?a事件的物理机制。混合层热收支分析的结果表明,在El Ni?o衰减年的4~11月,2016年平流反馈和温跃层反馈相对较弱,混合层温度衰减速率慢,其产生的主要原因是赤道中西太平洋的东风异常较弱。进一步分析表明,赤道中西太平洋的东风异常与副热带东北太平洋的海表温度异常（SSTA）有关,该地区的SST在1998年表现为冷异常,2016年为暖异常。副热带东北太平洋冷的SSTA有利于信风加强,从而加强中西太平洋的东风异常;而暖的SSTA使得赤道以北出现西南风异常,从而削弱中西太平洋的东风异常。此外,合成分析也表明,副热带东北太平洋SSTA与转变的La Ni?a的强度具有关联,El Ni?o转变为强La Ni?a的情况在位相转变期伴随着副热带北太平洋冷的SSTA,而El Ni?o转变为弱La Ni?a的情况没有明显的冷SSTA。     

Modes of SST variability and the fluctuation of global mean temperature

Annually averaged global mean land air temperature and sea surface temperature (SST) combined, and global mean SST alone share similar fluctuations. We examine contributions by modes of SST variability in the global mean SST based on a new version (version 3) of global sea-ice and SST (GISST3). Besides a trend mode, the dominant modes are El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), interhemispheric oscillation, and North Pacific oscillation. Statistics over the period of 1880–1997 show that excluding a warming trend the fluctuation on interannual (IA) and decadal-interdecadal (DID) time scales is dominated by IA ENSO and DID ENSO-like variability. However, the contribution by IA ENSO cycles experiences significant fluctuations, and there appears to be strong modulations by ENSO-like variability on DID or longer time scales: during several decade-long periods, when DID ENSO-like variability raises the temperature in the equatorial eastern Pacific, the contribution by IA ENSO cycles weakens to an insignificant level. The latest example of such modulation is the period since about 1980; despite the exceptional strength of El Niño events, the contribution by IA ENSO cycles weakens, suggesting that the exceptional strength is a consequence of superposition of IA El Niño events, a warming phase of DID ENSO-like variability, and possibly an ENSO-like warming trend.     

SST and ENSO variability and change simulated in historical experiments of CMIP5 models

This work documents the diversity in Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models in simulating different aspects of sea surface temperature (SST) variability, particularly those associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as well as the impact of low-frequency variations on the ENSO variability and its global teleconnection. The historical simulations (1870–2005) include 10 models with ensemble member ranging from 3 to 10 that are forced with observed atmospheric composition changes reflecting both natural and anthropogenic forcings. It is shown that the majority of the CMIP5 models capture the relative large SST anomaly variance in the tropical central and eastern Pacific, as well as in North Pacific and North Atlantic. The frequency of ENSO is not well captured by almost all models, particularly for the period of 5–6 years. The low-frequency variations in SST caused by external forcings affect the SST variability and also modify the global teleconnection of ENSO. The models reproduce the global averaged SST low-frequency variations, particularly since 1970s. However, majority of the models are unable to correctly simulate the spatial pattern of the observed SST trends. These results suggest that it is still a challenge to reproduce the features of global historical SST variations with the state-of-the-art coupled general circulation model.     

Simulation of state-dependent high-frequency atmospheric variability associated with ENSO

High-frequency atmospheric variability depends on the phase of El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Recently, there is increasing evidence that state-dependent high-frequency atmospheric variability significantly modulates ENSO characteristics. Hence, in this study, we examine the model simulations of high-frequency atmospheric variability and, further, its dependency on the El Nino phase, using atmospheric and coupled GCMs (AGCM and CGCM). We use two versions of physical packages here—with and without convective momentum transport (CMT)—in both models. We found that the CMT simulation gives rise to a large climatological zonal wind difference over the Pacific. Also, both the climate models show a significantly improved performance in simulating the state-dependent noise when the CMT parameterization is implemented. We demonstrate that the better simulation of the state-dependent noise results from a better representation of anomalous, as well as climatological, zonal wind. Our further comparisons between the simulations, demonstrates that low-frequency wind is a crucial factor in determining the state-dependency of high-frequency wind variability. Therefore, it is suggested that the so-called state-dependent noise is directly induced by the low-frequency wind anomaly, which is caused by SST associated with ENSO.