ENSO's Changing Influence on Temperature, Precipitation, and Wildfire in a Warming Climate

Fasullo, J. T.; Otto-Bliesner, B. L.; Stevenson, S.

doi:10.1029/2018gl079022

Title: ENSO's Changing Influence on Temperature, Precipitation, and Wildfire in a Warming Climate

Journal Article · Wed Aug 22 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Geophysical Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2018gl079022· OSTI ID:1511151

^[1];

^[2]

National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)

On interannual to decadal time scales, the climate mode with many of the strongest societal impacts is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). However, quantifying ENSO's changes in a warming climate remains a formidable challenge, due to both the noise arising from internal variability and the complexity of air-sea feedbacks in the tropical Pacific Ocean. In this paper, we use large (≥30-member) ensembles of climate simulations to show that anthropogenic climate change can produce systematic increases in ENSO teleconnection strength over many land regions, driving increased interannual variability in regional temperature extremes and wildfire frequency. As the spatial character of this intensification exhibits strong land-ocean contrasts, a causal role for land-atmosphere feedbacks is suggested. The identified increase in variance occurs in multiple model ensembles, independent of changes in sea surface temperature variance. In conclusion, this suggests that in addition to changes in the overall likelihoods of heat and wildfire extremes, the variability in these events may also be a robust feature of future climate.

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Research Organization:: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0012711

OSTI ID:: 1511151

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1471133

Journal Information:: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 45, Issue 17; ISSN 0094-8276

Publisher:: American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 89 works

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