The El Niño stochastic oscillator

A stochastic model is fitted to the observed NINO3.4 time series between 1951–1995. The model is nothing more than the complex version of a first-order autoregressive process. The autocorrelation of this stochastic oscillator model is an exponentially decaying cosine, specified by three parameters: a period, a decay time, and a phase shift. It fits the observed NINO3.4 autocorrelation quite well. Anomalies during an El Niño can be characterized to a large extent by a single, irregularly oscillating, index. Equatorial wave dynamics and delayed-oscillator models have been used to explain this behaviour, and it has been suggested that El Niño might be a stable phenomenon excited by weather noise. Assuming this is the case, the stochastic oscillator has a direct physical interpretation: the parameters of the oscillation can be linked to dynamical models of the delayed-oscillator type, and the noise terms represent random influences, such as intraseasonal oscillations. Long Monte Carlo simulations with the stochastic oscillator show substantial decadal variability and variation in predictability. The observed decadal variability is comparable, except for the rather large rise in the long-term mean around 1980. The observed seasonal dependence of El Niño behaviour is not compatible with the natural variability of a stationary stochastic oscillator. Formulating the model in terms of standardized anomalies takes into account some of the seasonal dependence. A stochastic oscillator forecast model has a skill approaching that of more comprehensive statistical models and may thus serve as an appropriate baseline for the skill of El Niño forecasting systems.     

Impact of El Niño onset timing on the Indian Ocean: Pacific coupling and subsequent El Niño evolution

A relation between the timing of the El Niño onset and its subsequent evolution is examined by emphasizing its association with the Indian Ocean (IO) SST variation. Two types of El Niño events based on the timing of their onset are classified and their characteristics are examined and compared. In general, spring onset (SP) events grow greater in magnitude and their evolutions have a faster transition. On the contrary, summer onset (SU) events are relatively weaker in magnitude and have a slower transition. Moreover, in contrast to the SU events, the SP events have a strong tendency for accompanying an IO dipole and basin-wide type of warming pattern in the El Niño developing and mature phases, respectively. It is demonstrated here that the distinctive evolutions in transition phase of the two events are resulted from the difference in IO SST. The warm IO SST in the SP El Niño event, lead an anomalous easterlies over the western Pacific, which forces a fast termination of El Niño events.     

Influence of the pace of El Niño decay on tropical cyclone frequency over the western north pacific during decaying El Niño summers

This study investigated the distinct responses of western North Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclone (TC) activity during different decaying El Niño summers. The El Niño events were classified into two types according to the periodicity of the ENSO cycle, with positive SST anomalies in the equatorial central-eastern Pacific maintaining positive values into the following summer as the slow decaying (SD) cases, but transforming to negative values in the following summer as the rapid decaying (RD) cases. Compared with that in SD El Niño summers, the TC occurrence frequency over the WNP is significantly lower in RD El Niño summers, led by a much weaker WNP monsoon trough with more unfavorable environmental factors for TC genesis and development. Further examination showed that the apparent warming over the tropical Indian Ocean basin and cooling over the equatorial central-eastern Pacific contribute together to an enhanced lower-tropospheric anticyclone through modulation of the descending branch of the large-scale Walker circulation over the WNP, which may play a crucial role in suppressing the TC activity during the decaying summer of RD El Niño cases. In contrast, the warming equatorial central-eastern Pacific and remote western Indian Ocean induce a weakening WNP anticyclone and less suppressed deep convection during the decaying summer of SD El Niño cases. Thus, the different evolution of SST anomalies associated with different paces of El Niño decay results in the linkage between the preceding winter El Niño and the decreased WNP TC frequency in summer being more (less) robust for RD (SD) El Niño cases.摘要本文分析了El Niño事件衰减速度的差异对衰退年夏季西北太平洋热带气旋 (tropical cyclone, TC) 频数的不同影响. 按照El Niño事件衰减速度不同, 将其划分为迅速衰减 (rapid decaying, RD) 和缓慢衰减 (slow decaying, SD) 的El Niño事件. SD (RD) El Niño事件的衰退年夏季, 赤道中东太平洋海温仍维持正异常 (衰减为负异常) . 与SD El Niño事件相比, RD El Niño事件衰退年夏季西北太平洋TC频数显著减少. 进一步的分析揭示了导致TC频数差异的大尺度环境要素, 指出热带印度洋-太平洋海温异常密切相关的西北太平洋低层反气旋异常在其中起到了关键作用.     

Anomalous winter climate conditions in the Pacific rim during recent El Niño Modoki and El Niño events

Present work compares impacts of El Niño Modoki and El Niño on anomalous climate in the Pacific rim during boreal winters of 1979–2005. El Niño Modoki (El Niño) is associated with tripole (dipole) patterns in anomalies of sea-surface temperature, precipitation, and upper-level divergent wind in the tropical Pacific, which are related to multiple “boomerangs” of ocean-atmosphere conditions in the Pacific. Zonal and meridional extents of those “boomerangs” reflect their independent influences, which are seen from lower latitudes in the west to higher latitudes in the east. In the central Pacific, more moisture is transported from the tropics to higher latitudes during El Niño Modoki owing to displacement of the wet “boomerang” arms more poleward toward east. Discontinuities at outer “boomerang” arms manifest intense interactions between tropical and subtropical/extratropical systems. The Pacific/North American pattern and related climate anomalies in North America found in earlier studies are modified in very different ways by the two phenomena. The seesaw with the dry north and the wet south in the western USA is more likely to occur during El Niño Modoki, while much of the western USA is wet during El Niño. The moisture to the southwestern USA is transported from the northward shifted ITCZ during El Niño Modoki, while it is carried by the storms traveling along the southerly shifted polar front jet during El Niño. The East Asian winter monsoon related anticyclone is over the South China Sea during El Niño Modoki as compared to its position over the Philippine Sea during El Niño, causing opposite precipitation anomalies in the southern East Asia between the two phenomena.     

Simulation of two types of El Niño from different convective parameters

Many recent studies have reported the presence of two types of El Niño events in observation: Cold Tongue (CT) El Niño and Warm Pool (WP) El Niño. We investigate the sensitivity of a model simulating two types of El Niño by changing a convective triggering parameter (Tokioka parameter). When deep convections are highly suppressed with a large Tokioka parameter, the model is capable of simulating distinct two-types of El Niño. However, the model has a problem in simulating two-types of El Niño distinctively when the Tokioka parameter is small, because the location of the maximum precipitation anomaly related to the CT El Niño is significantly shifted westward, leading to an atmospheric response pattern similar to that of the WP El Niño. Our results suggest that the mean precipitation over the eastern equatorial Pacific and the resultant zonal distribution in atmospheric feedback associated with ENSO can be one of the crucial factors for simulating two-types of El Niño.     

El Niño teleconnections in CMIP5 models

Teleconnections associated with warm El Niño/southern oscillation (ENSO) events in 20 climate model intercomparison project 5 (CMIP5) models have been compared with reanalysis observations. Focus has been placed on compact time and space indices, which can be assigned a specific statistical confidence. Nearly all of the models have surface temperature, precipitation and 250 hPa geopotential height departures in the Tropics that are in good agreement with the observations. Most of the models also have realistic anomalies of Northern Hemisphere near-surface temperature, precipitation and 500 hPa geopotential height. Model skill for these variables is significantly related to the ability of a model to accurately simulate Tropical 250 hPa height departures. Additionally, most models have realistic temperature and precipitation anomalies over North America, which are linked to a model’s ability to simulate Tropical 250 hPa and Northern Hemisphere 500 hPa height departures. The skills of temperature and precipitation departures over the Northern Hemisphere and North America are associated with the ability to realistically simulate realistic ENSO frequency and length. Neither horizontal nor vertical resolution differences for either the model atmosphere or ocean are significantly related at the 95 % level to variations in El Niño simulation quality. Overall, recent versions of earlier models have improved in their ability to simulate El Niño teleconnections. For instance, the average model skills of temperature and precipitation for the Tropics, Northern Hemisphere and North America for 11 CMIP5 models are all larger than those for prior versions.     

Towards optimal observational array for dealing with challenges of El Niño-Southern Oscillation predictions due to diversities of El Niño

This paper investigates the optimal observational array for improving the initialization of El Niño-Southern Oscillation predictions by exploring the sensitive areas for target observations of two types of El Niño predictions. The sensitive areas are identified by calculating the optimally growing errors (OGEs) of the Zebiak–Cane model, as corrected by the optimal forcing vector that is determined by assimilating the observed sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs). It is found that although the OGEs have similar structures for different start months of predictions, the regions covered by much large errors for the SSTA component tend to locate at different zonal positions and depends on the start months. Furthermore, these regions are also in difference between two types of El Niño events. The regions covered by large errors of OGEs represent the sensitive areas for target observations. Considering the dependence of the sensitive areas on related El Niño types and the start months of predictions, the present study propose a quantitative frequency method to determine the sensitive areas for target observations associated with two types of El Niño predictions, which is expected to be applicable for both types of El Niño predictions with different start months. As a result, the sensitive areas that describe the array of target observations are presented with a reversal triangle-like shape locating in the eastern Pacific, specifically the area of 120°W–85°W, 0°S–11°S, and an extension to the west along the equator and then gathering at the 180° longitude and the western boundary. “Hindcast” experiments demonstrated that such observational array is very useful in distinguishing two types of El Niño and superior to the TAO/TRITON array. It is therefore suggested that the observational array provided in the present study is towards the optimal one and the original TAO/TRITON array should be further optimized when applied to predictions of the diversities of El Niño events.

     

Indices of El Nio and El Nio Modoki:An Improved El Nio Modoki Index

In recent years, El Nio Modoki (a type of pseudo-El Nio) has been distinguished as a unique large-scale ocean warming phenomenon happening in the central tropical Pacific that is quite different from the traditional El Nio. In this study, EOF analysis was used to successfully separate El Nio and El Nio Modoki. The abilities of the NINO3 index, NINO3.4 index, NINO1+2 index and NINO4 index in characterizing El Nio were explored in detail. The resulting suggestion was that, comparatively, NINO3 is the op...     

Forecasting El Niño and La Niña events using decision tree classifier

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon affects the global climate by changing temperature and precipitation patterns mainly in tropical...     

Optimally growing initial errors of El Niño events in the CESM

The optimally growing initial errors (OGEs) of El Niño events are found in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) by the conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation (CNOP) method. Based on the characteristics of low-dimensional attractors for ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) systems, we apply singular vector decomposition (SVD) to reduce the dimensions of optimization problems and calculate the CNOP in a truncated phase space by the differential evolution (DE) algorithm. In the CESM, we obtain three types of OGEs of El Niño events with different intensities and diversities and call them type-1, type-2 and type-3 initial errors. Among them, the type-1 initial error is characterized by negative SSTA errors in the equatorial Pacific accompanied by a negative west–east slope of subsurface temperature from the subsurface to the surface in the equatorial central-eastern Pacific. The type-2 initial error is similar to the type-1 initial error but with the opposite sign. The type-3 initial error behaves as a basin-wide dipolar pattern of tropical sea temperature errors from the sea surface to the subsurface, with positive errors in the upper layers of the equatorial eastern Pacific and negative errors in the lower layers of the equatorial western Pacific. For the type-1 (type-2) initial error, the negative (positive) temperature errors in the eastern equatorial Pacific develop locally into a mature La Niña (El Niño)-like mode. For the type-3 initial error, the negative errors in the lower layers of the western equatorial Pacific propagate eastward with Kelvin waves and are intensified in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Although the type-1 and type-3 initial errors have different spatial patterns and dynamic growing mechanisms, both cause El Niño events to be underpredicted as neutral states or La Niña events. However, the type-2 initial error makes a moderate El Niño event to be predicted as an extremely strong event.

     

Impacts of strong El Niño on summertime near-surface ozone over China

The influences of strong El Niño events (1997/98 and 2015/16) on summertime near-surface ozone (O₃) concentrations over China are investigated using the GEOS-Chem model. The results show that near-surface O₃ concentrations increased by a maximum of 6 ppb (parts per billion) during the summer of the developing phase of the 1997/98 El Niño in northeastern China, mainly due to the increased chemical production related to the hot and dry conditions. Besides, the O₃ concentration increased by 3 ppb during the developing summer of both the 1997/98 and 2015/16 El Niño in southern China. It was linked to the weakened prevailing monsoon winds, which led to the accumulation of O₃ in southern China. In contrast, in the summer of the decaying phase of the two El Niño events, O₃ concentrations decreased over many regions of China when the El Niño reversed to the cooling phase. This highlights that El Niño plays an important role in modulating near-surface O₃ concentrations over China.摘要利用全球大气化学三维模式 (GEOS-Chem) 模拟研究两次强厄尔尼诺事件 (1997/98和2015/16) 对中国夏季近地面臭氧 (O₃₎ 浓度的影响. 结果表明1997/98年厄尔尼诺事件发展期夏季中国东北区域O₃浓度升高, 最大值超过6ppb, 这主要归因于高温晴朗低湿等气象因素导致O₃化学生成升高. 此外, 两次厄尔尼诺事件发展期夏季O₃浓度在中国南部均增加了3ppb, 这与盛行季风减弱导致中国南方O₃局地积累有关. 相反, 在两次强厄尔尼诺衰减期夏季, 中国大部分地区O₃浓度下降伴随着海温模态转变为拉尼娜事件. 这表明厄尔尼诺在调节中国近地面O₃浓度中发挥着重要作用.     

Role of tropical atlantic SST variability as a modulator of El Niño teleconnections

The present study suggests that the off-equatorial North Atlantic (NATL) SST warming plays a significant role in modulating El Niño teleconnection and its impact on the North Atlantic and European regions. The El Niño events accompanied by NATL SST warming exhibit south-north dipole pattern over the Western Europe to Atlantic, while the ENSO teleconnection pattern without NATL warming exhibits a Rossby wave-like pattern confined over the North Pacific and western Atlantic. Especially, the El Niño events with NATL warming show positive (negative) geopotential-height anomalies over the North Atlantic (Western Europe) which resemble the negative phase of the NAO. Consistently, it is shown using a simple statistical model that NATL SSTA in addition to the tropical Pacific SSTA leads to better prediction on regional climate variation over the North Atlantic and European regions. This role of NATL SST on ENSO teleconnection is also validated and discussed in a long term simulation of coupled global circulation model (CGCM).     

The importance of the eastward zonal current for generating extreme El Niño

Extreme El Niño (e.g., 1983/1983 and 1997/1998) causes severe weather and climate impacts globally, but the associated dynamics is not fully understood. The present study shows that advection of mean temperature by anomalous eastward zonal current plays an important role in producing such extreme events especially during the early part of the developing period. While the climatological direction of the upper oceanic current in the equatorial Pacific is westward, at times the direction reverses. These eastward current events are well distinguished from the normal, westward conditions. The upper-layer zonal current in the equatorial Pacific is basically in geostrophic balance and forced by wind stress. However, in the case of the eastward zonal current events, persistent westerly winds are observed in the Western Pacific, and the current becomes synchronized with the westerly wind stress above. The advection of the mean temperature by the anomalous zonal current in the early developing period always precedes strong El Niño, though it does not significantly contribute to the growth of La Niña, neutral, and moderate El Niño; and is the major contributor of asymmetry in the early developing phase.     

Favorable connections between seasonal footprinting mechanism and El Niño

Previous studies suggested that the wintertime SST in the North Pacific that are generated by the concurrent North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) are able to force El Niño during subsequent winter via the so-called ‘seasonal footprinting mechanism’ (SFM). We examine how the NPO effectively generates the El Niño via the SFM in the observations and models. The occurrence ratio for El Niño under conditions of NPO forcing during the previous winters is about 41 % for the period of 61 years (1949–2009), indicating that the atmospheric forcing from the mid-latitudes through the SFM does not always trigger an El Niño. We observed certain favorable conditions under which the SFM may effectively induce El Niño. We directly compared these observations with two cases: when the wintertime NPO leads to El Niño during the following winter through the SFM, and when the wintertime NPO is not followed by El Niño. Our analysis demonstrates that the spatial structures of the NPO, associated wind speed and net heat flux in the northeast Pacific, differ between the two cases. Such differences determine the existence of a footprint SST in the northeastern Pacific during the late spring and summer, which plays a key role in initiating the El Niño via the projection of westerly wind stress anomalies onto the equatorial Pacific during the same seasons. By conducting linear baroclinic model experiments, it is found that the positions of La Niña SST forcing during the previous winter are able to modify the spatial structures of the NPO, which produces favorable conditions for the El Niño during subsequent winter via the SFM.     

Variability of the western Pacific warm pool structure associated with El Niño

Climate Dynamics - Sea surface temperature (SST) structure inside the western Pacific warm pool (WPWP) is usually overlooked because of its distinct homogeneity, but in fact it possesses a clear...