Variability in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation through a glacial-interglacial cycle

The El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most potent source of interannual climate variability. Uncertainty surrounding the impact of greenhouse warming on ENSO strength and frequency has stimulated efforts to develop a better understanding of the sensitivity of ENSO to climate change. Here we use annually banded corals from Papua New Guinea to show that ENSO has existed for the past 130,000 years, operating even during "glacial" times of substantially reduced regional and global temperature and changed solar forcing. However, we also find that during the 20th century ENSO has been strong compared with ENSO of previous cool (glacial) and warm (interglacial) times. The observed pattern of change in amplitude may be due to the combined effects of ENSO dampening during cool glacial conditions and ENSO forcing by precessional orbital variations.     

Eocene El Niño: evidence for robust tropical dynamics in the "hothouse"

Much uncertainty surrounds the interactions between the El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and long-term global change. Past periods of extreme global warmth, exemplified by the Eocene (55 to 35 million years ago), provide a good testing ground for theories for this interaction. Here, we compare Eocene coupled climate model simulations with annually resolved variability records preserved in lake sediments. The simulations show Pacific deep-ocean and high-latitude surface warming of approximately 10 degrees C but little change in the tropical thermocline structure, atmosphere-ocean dynamics, and ENSO, in agreement with proxies. This result contrasts with theories linking past and future "hothouse" climates with a shift toward a permanent El Ni?o-like state.     

ENSO as an integrating concept in earth science

The El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle of alternating warm El Ni?o and cold La Ni?a events is the dominant year-to-year climate signal on Earth. ENSO originates in the tropical Pacific through interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere, but its environmental and socioeconomic impacts are felt worldwide. Spurred on by the powerful 1997-1998 El Ni?o, efforts to understand the causes and consequences of ENSO have greatly expanded in the past few years. These efforts reveal the breadth of ENSO's influence on the Earth system and the potential to exploit its predictability for societal benefit. However, many intertwined issues regarding ENSO dynamics, impacts, forecasting, and applications remain unresolved. Research to address these issues will not only lead to progress across a broad range of scientific disciplines but also provide an opportunity to educate the public and policy makers about the importance of climate variability and change in the modern world.     

Reduced interannual rainfall variability in East Africa during the last ice age

Interannual rainfall variations in equatorial East Africa are tightly linked to the El Ni?o Southern Oscillation (ENSO), with more rain and flooding during El Ni?o and droughts in La Ni?a years, both having severe impacts on human habitation and food security. Here we report evidence from an annually laminated lake sediment record from southeastern Kenya for interannual to centennial-scale changes in ENSO-related rainfall variability during the last three millennia and for reductions in both the mean rate and the variability of rainfall in East Africa during the Last Glacial period. Climate model simulations support forward extrapolation from these lake sediment data that future warming will intensify the interannual variability of East Africa's rainfall.     

Super ENSO and global climate oscillations at millennial time scales

The late Pleistocene history of seawater temperature and salinity variability in the western tropical Pacific warm pool is reconstructed from oxygen isotope (delta18O) and magnesium/calcium composition of planktonic foraminifera. Differentiating the calcite delta18O record into components of temperature and local water delta18O reveals a dominant salinity signal that varied in accord with Dansgaard/Oeschger cycles over Greenland. Salinities were higher at times of high-latitude cooling and were lower during interstadials. The pattern and magnitude of the salinity variations imply shifts in the tropical Pacific ocean/atmosphere system analogous to modern El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). El Ni?o conditions correlate with stadials at high latitudes, whereas La Ni?a conditions correlate with interstadials. Millennial-scale shifts in atmospheric convection away from the western tropical Pacific may explain many paleo-observations, including lower atmospheric CO2, N2O, and CH4 during stadials and patterns of extratropical ocean variability that have tropical source functions that are negatively correlated with El Ni?o.     

The el nino cycle: a natural oscillator of the pacific ocean--atmosphere system

Research conducted during the past decade has led to an understanding of many of the mechanisms responsible for the oceanic and atmospheric variability associated with the El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). However, the reason for one of the fundamental characteristics of this phenomena, its quasi-periodicity, has remained unclear. Recently available evidence from a number of sources now suggests that the ENSO "cycle" operates as a natural oscillator based on relatively simple couplings between the tropical atmospheric circulation, the dynamics of the warm upper layer of the tropical ocean, and sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific. This concept and recent field evidence supporting the natural coupled oscillator hypothesis are outlined.     

Biospheric primary production during an ENSO transition

The Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) provides global monthly measurements of both oceanic phytoplankton chlorophyll biomass and light harvesting by land plants. These measurements allowed the comparison of simultaneous ocean and land net primary production (NPP) responses to a major El Ni?o to La Ni?a transition. Between September 1997 and August 2000, biospheric NPP varied by 6 petagrams of carbon per year (from 111 to 117 petagrams of carbon per year). Increases in ocean NPP were pronounced in tropical regions where El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) impacts on upwelling and nutrient availability were greatest. Globally, land NPP did not exhibit a clear ENSO response, although regional changes were substantial.     

Cool La Niña during the warmth of the Pliocene?

The role of El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in greenhouse warming and climate change remains controversial. During the warmth of the early-mid Pliocene, we find evidence for enhanced thermocline tilt and cold upwelling in the equatorial Pacific, consistent with the prevalence of a La Ni?a-like state, rather than the proposed persistent warm El Ni?o-like conditions. Our Pliocene paleothermometer supports the idea of a dynamic "ocean thermostat" in which heating of the tropical Pacific leads to a cooling of the east equatorial Pacific and a La Ni?a-like state, analogous to observations of a transient increasing east-west sea surface temperature gradient in the 20th-century tropical Pacific.     

Cholera dynamics and El Niño-Southern Oscillation

Analysis of a monthly 18-year cholera time series from Bangladesh shows that the temporal variability of cholera exhibits an interannual component at the dominant frequency of El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Results from nonlinear time series analysis support a role for both ENSO and previous disease levels in the dynamics of cholera. Cholera patterns are linked to the previously described changes in the atmospheric circulation of south Asia and, consistent with these changes, to regional temperature anomalies.     

2005—2016年中国东海鲐鱼渔场的时空分布及与海表面温度的关联

根据2005—2016年7—9月中国远洋渔业数据中心提供的我国东海鲐鱼捕捞数据,结合关键因子海表面温度(sea surface temperature, SST),计算各年鲐鱼渔场经纬度重心,量化鲐鱼渔场重心的时空变化。进一步分析捕捞努力量在经度、纬度以及SST上的分布规律,并基于聚类法筛选出代表年份,评估异常气候事件对鲐鱼渔场内SST及渔场重心时空分布的影响。研究结果显示,鲐鱼渔场重心具有明显的年际和月间变化,7—9月渔场逐渐向东北方向移动,且主要分布渔场SST为25～28℃。聚类分析将各月份渔场重心分为4类,其中2007和2015年渔场分布具有显著差异。此外,鲐鱼渔场内SST与尼诺指数具有显著的正相关关系,且代表年份2007和2015年分别对应拉尼娜事件和厄尔尼诺事件,当拉尼娜事件发生时,渔场内SST上升,渔场重心逐渐北移;而厄尔尼诺事件发生时,渔场内SST下降,渔场重心主要分布在南部海域。研究表明,中国东海鲐鱼渔场时空分布受到厄尔尼诺和拉尼娜调控的海表面温度变化的显著影响。     

El Niño-like pattern in ice age tropical Pacific sea surface temperature

Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the cold tongue of the eastern equatorial Pacific exert powerful controls on global atmospheric circulation patterns. We examined climate variability in this region from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the present, using a SST record reconstructed from magnesium/calcium ratios in foraminifera from sea-floor sediments near the Galápagos Islands. Cold-tongue SST varied coherently with precession-induced changes in seasonality during the past 30,000 years. Observed LGM cooling of just 1.2 degrees C implies a relaxation of tropical temperature gradients, weakened Hadley and Walker circulation, southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and a persistent El Ni?o-like pattern in the tropical Pacific. This is contrasted with mid-Holocene cooling suggestive of a La Ni?a-like pattern with enhanced SST gradients and strengthened trade winds. Our results support a potent role for altered tropical Pacific SST gradients in global climate variations.     

El nino chaos: overlapping of resonances between the seasonal cycle and the pacific ocean-atmosphere oscillator

The El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle is modeled as a low-order chaotic process driven by the seasonal cycle. A simple model suggests that the equatorial Pacific ocean-atmosphere oscillator can go into nonlinear resonance with the seasonal cycle and that with strong enough coupling between the ocean and the atmosphere, the system may become chaotic as a result of irregular jumping of the ocean-atmosphere system among different nonlinear resonances. An analysis of a time series from an ENSO prediction model is consistent with the low-order chaos mechanism.     

Unraveling the mystery of Indian monsoon failure during El Niño

The 132-year historical rainfall record reveals that severe droughts in India have always been accompanied by El Ni?o events. Yet El Ni?o events have not always produced severe droughts. We show that El Ni?o events with the warmest sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the central equatorial Pacific are more effective in focusing drought-producing subsidence over India than events with the warmest SSTs in the eastern equatorial Pacific. The physical basis for such different impacts is established using atmospheric general circulation model experiments forced with idealized tropical Pacific warmings. These findings have important implications for Indian monsoon forecasting.     

海洋环境变化对北太平洋柔鱼耳石形态的影响

海洋环境变化会对海洋生物个体及其组织形态产生影响。本研究根据2012年(PDO冷期厄尔尼诺年)、2015年(PDO暖期拉尼娜年)和2016年(PDO暖期厄尔尼诺年)7-10月我国鱿钓船在北太平洋海域采集的柔鱼样本,分析不同年间、不同性别的耳石形态特征差异,并探究耳石形态对海洋环境变化的响应。结果发现,北太平洋柔鱼不同海洋环境年份、不同性别的耳石形态特征存在显著的差异(P<0.05),PDO冷期厄尔尼诺年(2012年)和PDO暖期厄尔尼诺年(2016年)形态值均大于PDO暖期拉尼娜年(2015年)形态值。主成分分析认为,耳石总长(TSL)、翼区长(WL)、吻侧区长(RLL)可以表征耳石长度特征,耳石宽(MW)、翼区宽(WW)、吻区宽(RW)可以表征耳石宽度特征。通过方差分析发现TSL、WL、RLL、MW与胴长之间存在显著的相关性(P<0.05),且不同海洋环境年份和不同性别均存在显著差异(P<0.05),而WW、RW与胴长之间没有显著的相关性(P>0.05)。结合各月索饵场的海表面温度（sea surface temperature,SST）和叶绿素a浓度（chlorophyll a,Chl.a）分析发现,在适宜范围内,较高的SST和Chl.a浓度对应较大的耳石。     

Recent variability in the southern oscillation: isotopic results from a tarawa atoll coral

In the western tropical Pacific, the interannual migration of the Indonesian Low convective system causes changes in rainfall that dominate the regional signature of the El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system. A 96-year oxygen isotope record from a Tarawa Atoll coral (1 degrees N, 172 degrees E) reflects regional convective activity through rainfall-induced salinity changes. This monthly resolution record spans twice the length of the local climatological record and provides a history of ENSO variability comparable in quality with those derived from instrumental climate data. Comparison of this coral record with a historical chronology of EI Ni?o events indicates that climate anomalies in coastal South America are occasionally decoupled from Pacific-wide ENSO extremes. Spectral analysis suggests that the distribution of variance in this record has shifted among annual to interannual periods during the present century, concurrent with observed changes in the strength of the Southern Oscillation.     

ENSO drove 2500-year collapse of eastern Pacific coral reefs

Cores of coral reef frameworks along an upwelling gradient in Panamá show that reef ecosystems in the tropical eastern Pacific collapsed for 2500 years, representing as much as 40% of their history, beginning about 4000 years ago. The principal cause of this millennial-scale hiatus in reef growth was increased variability of the El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and its coupling with the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The hiatus was a Pacific-wide phenomenon with an underlying climatology similar to probable scenarios for the next century. Global climate change is probably driving eastern Pacific reefs toward another regional collapse.     

厄尔尼诺/拉尼娜事件对区域气温的影响与预测——以沈阳地区为例

利用1961—2015年国家气象信息中心沈阳站的日平均气温资料、美国国家海洋和大气管理局（National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,NOAA）提供的多变量ENSO指数（multivariate ENSO index,MEI）资料等,在分析沈阳地区气温月际变化的基础上,结合厄尔尼诺/拉尼娜事件对其影响特征,利用线性倾向估计和非线性自回归（nonlinear auto regressive models with exogenous inputs,NARX）神经网络模型分别对沈阳地区2011—2015年的气温进行预测。结果表明,1961—2015年共计660个月中,沈阳地区11月—3月气温的变异系数在20%以上,远大于其他月份。1961—2015年的厄尔尼诺/拉尼娜事件往往在秋冬季达到最大强度,或为导致沈阳地区11月—3月气温变异增强的原因之一。厄尔尼诺事件结束之后的春季,沈阳地区气温偏低的概率逾70%。沈阳地区气温随MEI变化的线性倾向值为0.98,决定系数为0.98且通过了0.01的可信度检验。利用MEI对沈阳地区的气温进行同期和时滞预测,NARX的预测结果均优于一元线性回归模型。当气温滞后MEI16个月时,两者的相关系数达到最大且通过了0.01的显著性检验,此时回归模型预测的相关系数为0.59,较同期预测提升了79%;NARX预测的均方误差（mean-square error,MSE）为0.49,较同期预测降低了36%,相关系数为0.86,较同期预测提升了8%。     

热带海温的时空变化及其与我国降水的关系

利用1979—2014年的NOAA/NASA海表温度延长重构数据和国家台站的观测数据,采用经验正交函数(EOF)方法,从赤道年平均海温出发,分析热带海温的时空变化特征以及印度洋—太平洋海温对我国年降水量的影响。结果表明,1979—2014年热带地区年平均海温为26℃,海温暖区主要集中在印度洋和西太平洋的赤道地区。热带海温距平时空变化特征:第1特征向量场在印度洋海温表现为全区一致型,太平洋海温表现为弱El Nio(La Nia)现象,时间系数与年降水量主要在新疆、西藏、青海、甘肃和河套地区为显著的正相关关系;第2特征向量场在太平洋海温表现为El Nio(La Nia)现象,印度洋海温表现为偶极子型,时间系数与年降水量在西藏和黄河中游地区为显著的正相关关系,在东北东部和长江以南地区为显著的负相关关系;第3特征向量场在太平洋海温表现为弱El Nio(La Nia)现象,印度洋海温表现为南北型,时间系数与年降水量在西藏、新疆、福建和东北西北部为显著的负相关关系。     

The possible link between net surface heating and el nino

Three diagnostic analyses are described which strongly suggest the importance of local net surface heating in the life history of the large-scale, air-sea phenomenon centered in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, commonly called El Ni?o. These analyses rely upon monthly marine weather summaries for the period 1957 to 1976. In the first, correlations and coherence spectra were calculated which show a strong link between the net surface heat flux and sea-surface temperature variations over the eastern equatorial Pacific. The second analysis, also based upon the use of coherence spectra, indicates a sea temperature precursor in the eastern ocean near 25 degrees S which precedes sea temperature changes near the El Ni?o focus near 5 degrees S. Since the link between the two regions would require ocean advective velocities that appear to be unreasonably large, this analysis also suggests the importance of atmospheric forcing through the surface heat flux. In the third analysis a proxy variable is described that seems to be a reasonable indicator of the overall effect of ocean dynamics on the temperature of the El Ni?o core region. A composite analysis of the four El Ni?o events of 1957, 1965, 1972, and 1976 suggests that local surface heating is important during the early part of an event, whereas dynamical factors dominate later.     

Oceanographic events during el nino

El Ni?o events, the most spectacular instances of interannual variability in the ocean, have profound consequences for climate and the ocean ecosystem. The 1982-1983 El Ni?o is perhaps the strongest in this century. El Ni?o events usually have followed a predictable pattern, but the recent event differs markedly. The physical oceanography of this El Ni?o is described and compared with that of earlier events.