El Niño/Southern Oscillation and tropical Pacific climate during the last millennium

Kim M. Cobb (), Christopher D. Charles, Hai Cheng and R. Lawrence Edwards
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Kim M. Cobb: University of California-San Diego
Christopher D. Charles: University of California-San Diego
Hai Cheng: University of Minnesota
R. Lawrence Edwards: University of Minnesota

Nature, 2003, vol. 424, issue 6946, 271-276

Abstract: Abstract Any assessment of future climate change requires knowledge of the full range of natural variability in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. Here we splice together fossil-coral oxygen isotopic records from Palmyra Island in the tropical Pacific Ocean to provide 30–150-year windows of tropical Pacific climate variability within the last 1,100 years. The records indicate mean climate conditions in the central tropical Pacific ranging from relatively cool and dry during the tenth century to increasingly warmer and wetter climate in the twentieth century. But the corals also document a broad range of ENSO behaviour that correlates poorly with these estimates of mean climate. The most intense ENSO activity within the reconstruction occurred during the mid-seventeenth century. Taken together, the coral data imply that the majority of ENSO variability over the last millennium may have arisen from dynamics internal to the ENSO system itself.

Date: 2003
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DOI: 10.1038/nature01779

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