Dynamics for El Niño-La Niña asymmetry constrain equatorial-Pacific warming pattern

Hayashi, Michiya; Jin, Fei-Fei; Stuecker, Malte F.

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17983-y

Dynamics for El Niño-La Niña asymmetry constrain equatorial-Pacific warming pattern

Journal Article · Fri Aug 28 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Nature Communications

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17983-y· OSTI ID:1801654

Hayashi, Michiya ^[1]; Jin, Fei-Fei ^[2]; ^[3]

Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI (United States). SOEST. Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences; OSTI
Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI (United States). SOEST. Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI (United States). SOEST. Dept. of Oceanography and International Pacific Research Center

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) results from the instability of and also modulates the strength of the tropical-Pacific cold tongue. While climate models reproduce observed ENSO amplitude relatively well, the majority still simulates its asymmetry between warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) phases very poorly. The causes of this major deficiency and consequences thereof are so far not well understood. Analysing both reanalyses and climate models, we here show that simulated ENSO asymmetry is largely proportional to subsurface nonlinear dynamical heating (NDH) along the equatorial Pacific thermocline. Most climate models suffer from too-weak NDH and too-weak linear dynamical ocean-atmosphere coupling. Nevertheless, a sizeable subset (about 1/3) having relatively realistic NDH shows that El Niño-likeness of the equatorial-Pacific warming pattern is linearly related to ENSO amplitude change in response to greenhouse warming. Therefore, better simulating the dynamics of ENSO asymmetry potentially reduces uncertainty in future projections.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0005110

OSTI ID:: 1801654

Journal Information:: Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 11; ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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