Distinctive precursory air–sea signals between regular and super El Niños

Chen, Lin; Li, Tim; Behera, Swadhin K.; Doi, Takeshi

doi:10.1007/s00376-016-5250-8

Cited by 49 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Other than the 1982/1983, 1997/1998, and 2015/2016 El Niños, we also pay attention to the 1972/1973 event as it has been regarded as an extreme El Niño by previous studies (e.g., Chen et al, ; Hong et al, ). These four events are to be compared to the remaining five strong events.…”

Section: Data Sets and Enso Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Defining Characteristics of ENSO Extremes and the Strong 2015/2016 El Niño

Santoso

McPhaden

Cai

2017

Reviews of Geophysics

424

302

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The year 2015 was special for climate scientists, particularly for the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) research community, as a major El Niño finally materialized after a long pause since the 1997/1998 extreme El Niño. It was scientifically exciting since, due to the short observational record, our knowledge of an extreme El Niño has been based only on the 1982/1983 and 1997/1998 events. The 2015/2016 El Niño was marked by many environmental disasters that are consistent with what is expected for an extreme El Niño. Considering the dramatic impacts of extreme El Niño, and the risk of a potential increase in frequency of ENSO extremes under greenhouse warming, it is timely to evaluate how the recent event fits into our understanding of ENSO extremes. Here we provide a review of ENSO, its nature and dynamics, and through analysis of various observed key variables, we outline the processes that characterize its extremes. The 2015/2016 El Niño brings a useful perspective into the state of understanding of these events and highlights areas for future research. While the 2015/2016 El Niño is characteristically distinct from the 1982/1983 and 1997/1998 events, it still can be considered as the first extreme El Niño of the 21st century. Its extremity can be attributed in part to unusually warm condition in 2014 and to long‐term background warming. In effect, this study provides a list of physically meaningful indices that are straightforward to compute for identifying and tracking extreme ENSO events in observations and climate models.

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Section: Data Sets and Enso Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Defining Characteristics of ENSO Extremes and the Strong 2015/2016 El Niño

Santoso

McPhaden

Cai

2017

Reviews of Geophysics

424

302

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The 2014-2016 period can be characterized by its El Niño events; there was a moderate eastern Pacific El Niño during winter 2014-2015 and a super El Niño during winter 2015-2016 (Chen et al, 2015;Min et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2016;Zhai et al, 2016). An El Niño event generally elevates global mean surface temperature of the following year (Trenberth et al, 2002;Banholzer and Donner, 2014;Zhang et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The global warming hiatus has faded away: An analysis of 2014–2016 global surface air temperatures

Zhang

Luo

et al. 2019

Intl Journal of Climatology

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We present an analysis of the global annual mean surface temperature anomaly in 2014, 2015, and 2016 based on five datasets of historical observational records of surface temperature. These three years are the three warmest on record in all but one of the datasets. The largest warming occurred over land, especially at high latitudes. Since the strong El Niño event that occurred in 2015/2016 was similar to the 1997/1998 El Niño, we compared the 2014–2016 period with 1998, the warmest year in the 20th century. The contribution to the annual mean surface temperature anomaly of climate variations at different time scales was assessed using ensemble empirical mode decomposition. Results based on the HadCRUT4 dataset suggest that the interannual component may have contributed an anomaly of −0.01°C in 2014, 0.12°C in 2015, and 0.06°C in 2016. These values are substantially lower than the contribution in 1998 (0.18°C). In comparison, the combined contribution of the decadal‐to‐multidecadal (DM) component and the long‐term warming trend was 0.64°C in 2014, 0.70°C in 2015, and 0.77°C in 2016, which are substantially greater than that in 1998 (0.41°C). Similar results were obtained using the other four datasets. The larger contribution from the DM component and the long‐term warming trend implies that warmer years like 2014–2016 may occur more frequently in the near future. We conclude that the so‐called warming hiatus has faded away.

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“…The, Q net is the summation of the net downward shortwave radiation absorbed in the mixed layer (Q sw ), net downward surface longwave radiation, and surface latent and sensible heat fluxes; R represents the residual term, r is the seawater mean density, and C p is the heat capacity of seawater under constant pressure. Following Wang et al (2012) and Chen et al (2016), the mixed layer depth (H) is defined as the depth where the water temperature is 0.88C lower than the surface value. All budget terms in Eq.…”

Section: B Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermocline Fluctuations in the Equatorial Pacific Related to the Two Types of El Niño Events

et al. 2017

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The interannual fluctuations of the equatorial thermocline are usually associated with El Niño activity, but the linkage between the thermocline modes and El Niño is still under debate. In the present study, a mode function decomposition method is applied to the equatorial Pacific thermocline, and the results show that the first two dominant modes (M1 and M2) identify two distinct characteristics of the equatorial Pacific thermocline. The M1 reflects a basinwide zonally tilted thermocline related to the eastern Pacific (EP) El Niño, with shoaling (deepening) in the western (eastern) equatorial Pacific. The M2 represents the central Pacific (CP) El Niño, characterized by a V-shaped equatorial Pacific thermocline (i.e., deep in the central equatorial Pacific and shallow on both the western and eastern boundaries). Furthermore, both modes are stable and significant on the interannual time scale, and manifest as the major feature of the thermocline fluctuations associated with the two types of El Niño events. As good proxies of EP and CP El Niño events, thermocline-based indices clearly reveal the inherent characteristics of subsurface ocean responses during the evolution of El Niño events, which are characterized by the remarkable zonal eastward propagation of equatorial subsurface ocean temperature anomalies, particularly during the CP El Niño. Further analysis of the mixed layer heat budget suggests that the air-sea interactions determine the establishment and development stages of the CP El Niño, while the thermocline feedback is vital for its further development. These results highlight the key influence of equatorial Pacific thermocline fluctuations in conjunction with the air-sea interactions, on the CP El Niño.

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Distinctive precursory air–sea signals between regular and super El Niños

Cited by 49 publications

References 56 publications

The Defining Characteristics of ENSO Extremes and the Strong 2015/2016 El Niño

The Defining Characteristics of ENSO Extremes and the Strong 2015/2016 El Niño

The global warming hiatus has faded away: An analysis of 2014–2016 global surface air temperatures

Thermocline Fluctuations in the Equatorial Pacific Related to the Two Types of El Niño Events

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