Increased variability of eastern Pacific El Niño under greenhouse warming

Wenju Cai (), Guojian Wang, Boris Dewitte, Lixin Wu (), Agus Santoso, Ken Takahashi, Yun Yang, Aude Carréric and Michael J. McPhaden
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Wenju Cai: Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology
Guojian Wang: Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology
Boris Dewitte: Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Áridas
Lixin Wu: Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology
Agus Santoso: Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR), CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
Ken Takahashi: Servicio Nacional de Meteorología e Hidrología del Perú—SENAMHI
Yun Yang: Beijing Normal University and University Corporation for Polar Research
Aude Carréric: Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales
Michael J. McPhaden: NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

Nature, 2018, vol. 564, issue 7735, 201-206

Abstract: Abstract The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant and most consequential climate variation on Earth, and is characterized by warming of equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) during the El Niño phase and cooling during the La Niña phase. ENSO events tend to have a centre—corresponding to the location of the maximum SST anomaly—in either the central equatorial Pacific (5° S–5° N, 160° E–150° W) or the eastern equatorial Pacific (5° S–5° N, 150°–90° W); these two distinct types of ENSO event are referred to as the CP-ENSO and EP-ENSO regimes, respectively. How the ENSO may change under future greenhouse warming is unknown, owing to a lack of inter-model agreement over the response of SSTs in the eastern equatorial Pacific to such warming. Here we find a robust increase in future EP-ENSO SST variability among CMIP5 climate models that simulate the two distinct ENSO regimes. We show that the EP-ENSO SST anomaly pattern and its centre differ greatly from one model to another, and therefore cannot be well represented by a single SST ‘index’ at the observed centre. However, although the locations of the anomaly centres differ in each model, we find a robust increase in SST variability at each anomaly centre across the majority of models considered. This increase in variability is largely due to greenhouse-warming-induced intensification of upper-ocean stratification in the equatorial Pacific, which enhances ocean–atmosphere coupling. An increase in SST variance implies an increase in the number of ‘strong’ EP-El Niño events (corresponding to large SST anomalies) and associated extreme weather events.

Keywords: Greenhouse Warming; Anomaly Center; El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO); Eastern Equatorial Pacific; Central Pacific ENSO (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0776-9

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