scholarly journals Is preconditioning effect on strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole by a preceding Central Pacific El Niño deterministic?

Author(s):  
Kai Yang ◽  
Wenju Cai ◽  
Gang Huang ◽  
Benjamin Ng ◽  
Guojian Wang
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guojian Wang ◽  
Wenju Cai

Abstract The 2019/20 Australian black summer bushfires were particularly severe in many respects, including its early commencement, large spatial coverage, and large number of burning days, preceded by record dry and hot anomalies. Determining whether greenhouse warming has played a role is an important issue. Here, we examine known modes of tropical climate variability that contribute to droughts in Australia to provide a gauge. We find that a two-year consecutive concurrence of the 2018 and 2019 positive Indian Ocean Dipole and the 2018 and 2019 Central Pacific El Niño, with the former affecting Southeast Australia, and the latter influencing eastern and northeastern Australia, may explain many characteristics of the fires. Such consecutive events occurred only once in the observations since 1911. Using two generations of state-of-the-art climate models under historical and a business-as-usual emission scenario, we show that the frequency of such consecutive concurrences increases slightly, but rainfall anomalies during such events are stronger in the future climate, and there are drying trends across Australia. The impact of the stronger rainfall anomalies during such events under drying trends is likely to be exacerbated by greenhouse warming-induced rise in temperatures, making such events in the future even more extreme.


Atmosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunxiang Li ◽  
Tianbao Zhao

Using composite, regular, and partial regression analyses in the six consecutive seasons from spring of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-/Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)-developing year through summer following the ENSO/IOD mature phase, the individual and combined impacts of El Niño and positive Indian Ocean Dipole (pIOD) on the evolution of precipitation in China are diagnosed for the period 1950–2013. It is shown that the seasonal responses of precipitation in China to El Niño and pIOD events, and their relationship with the large-scale atmospheric circulations, differ from one season to another. For the pure El Niño years, there is a seasonal reversal of precipitation over southeastern and northwestern China, with deficient precipitation occurring in these two regions before the onset of anomalous wet conditions in the developing autumn. Meanwhile, North China tends to be drier than normal in the developing seasons, but wetter than normal in the decaying seasons. For the pure pIOD events, southern China suffers a precipitation deficit (surplus) in the developing spring (summer and autumn). Furthermore, both North China and northwestern China experience excessive precipitation in the developing autumn and decaying summer. In addition, there is reduced precipitation in northeastern China during both the developing and decaying summers, whereas increased precipitation occurs in the developing autumn and decaying winter. For the combined years, southern China experiences enhanced moisture supply and suffers from increased precipitation from the developing summer through the subsequent spring, but reduced precipitation in the developing spring and decaying summer. Similar to the pure El Niño, northwestern (North) China becomes wetter than normal after the developing summer (autumn) in the combined years. In general, the ENSO/IOD-related precipitation variability could be explained by the associated anomaly circulations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 1169
Author(s):  
Da Liu ◽  
Wansuo Duan ◽  
Rong Feng

The effects of El Niño on the predictability of positive Indian Ocean dipole (pIOD) events are investigated by using the GFDL CM2p1 coupled model from the perspective of error growth. The results show that, under the influence of El Niño, the summer predictability barrier (SPB) for pIOD tends to intensify and the winter predictability barrier (WPB) is weakened. Since the reason for the weakening of WPB has been explained in a previous study, the present study attempts to explore why the SPB is enhanced. The results demonstrate that the initial sea temperature errors, which are most likely to induce SPB for pIOD with El Niño, possess patterns similar to those for pIOD without El Niño, whose dominant errors concentrate in the tropical Pacific Ocean (PO), with a pattern of negative SST errors occurring in the eastern and central PO and subsurface sea temperature errors being negative in the eastern PO and positive in the western PO. By tracking the development of such initial errors, it is found that the initial errors over PO lead to anomalous westerlies in the southeastern Indian Ocean (IO) through the effect of double-cell Walker circulation. Such westerly anomalies are inhibited by the strongest climatological easterly wind and the southeasterlies related to the pIOD event itself in summer, while they are enhanced by El Niño. This competing effect causes the intensified seasonal variation in latent heat flux, with much less loss in summer under the effect of El Niño. The greater suppression of the loss of latent heat flux favors the positive sea surface temperature (SST) errors developing much faster in the eastern Indian Ocean in summer, and eventually induces an enhanced SPB for pIOD due to El Niño.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 637-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas C. Jourdain ◽  
Matthieu Lengaigne ◽  
Jérome Vialard ◽  
Takeshi Izumo ◽  
Alexander Sen Gupta

Abstract Recent observational studies have suggested that negative and positive Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) events (nIOD and pIOD, respectively) favor a transition toward, respectively, El Niño and La Niña events one year later. These statistical inferences are however limited by the length and uncertainties in the observational records. This paper compares observational datasets with twenty-one 155-yr historical simulations from phase 5 of CMIP (CMIP5) to assess IOD and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) properties along with their synchronous and delayed relationships. In the observations and most CMIP5 models, it is shown that El Niños tend to be followed by La Niñas but not the opposite, that pIODs co-occur more frequently with El Niños than nIODs with La Niñas, that nIODs tend to be followed by El Niños one year later less frequently than pIODs by La Niñas, and that including an IOD index in a linear prediction based on the Pacific warm water volume improves ENSO peak hindcasts at 14 months lead. The IOD–ENSO delayed relationship partly results from a combination of ENSO intrinsic properties (e.g., the tendency for El Niños to be followed by La Niñas) and from the synchronous IOD–ENSO relationship. The results, however, reveal that this is not sufficient to explain the high prevalence of pIOD–Niña transitions in the observations and 75% of the CMIP5 models, and of nIOD–Niño transitions in 60% of CMIP5 models. This suggests that the tendency of IOD to lead ENSO by one year should be explained by a physical mechanism that, however, remains elusive in the CMIP5 models. The ability of many CMIP5 models to reproduce the delayed influence of the IOD on ENSO is nonetheless a strong incentive to explore extended-range dynamical forecasts of ENSO.


2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (17) ◽  
pp. 3428-3449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert S. Fischer ◽  
Pascal Terray ◽  
Eric Guilyardi ◽  
Silvio Gualdi ◽  
Pascale Delecluse

Abstract The question of whether and how tropical Indian Ocean dipole or zonal mode (IOZM) interannual variability is independent of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability in the Pacific is addressed in a comparison of twin 200-yr runs of a coupled climate model. The first is a reference simulation, and the second has ENSO-scale variability suppressed with a constraint on the tropical Pacific wind stress. The IOZM can exist in the model without ENSO, and the composite evolution of the main anomalies in the Indian Ocean in the two simulations is virtually identical. Its growth depends on a positive feedback between anomalous equatorial easterly winds, upwelling equatorial and coastal Kelvin waves reducing the thermocline depth and sea surface temperature off the coast of Sumatra, and the atmospheric dynamical response to the subsequently reduced convection. Two IOZM triggers in the boreal spring are found. The first is an anomalous Hadley circulation over the eastern tropical Indian Ocean and Maritime Continent, with an early northward penetration of the Southern Hemisphere southeasterly trades. This situation grows out of cooler sea surface temperatures in the southeastern tropical Indian Ocean left behind by a reinforcement of the late austral summer winds. The second trigger is a consequence of a zonal shift in the center of convection associated with a developing El Niño, a Walker cell anomaly. The first trigger is the only one present in the constrained simulation and is similar to the evolution of anomalies in 1994, when the IOZM occurred in the absence of a Pacific El Niño state. The presence of these two triggers—the first independent of ENSO and the second phase locking the IOZM to El Niño—allows an understanding of both the existence of IOZM events when Pacific conditions are neutral and the significant correlation between the IOZM and El Niño.


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