scholarly journals Diagnosing Human-Induced Dynamic and Thermodynamic Drivers of Extreme Rainfall

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 1029-1051 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linyin Cheng ◽  
Martin Hoerling ◽  
Lesley Smith ◽  
Jon Eischeid
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapor ◽  
El Niño ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Extreme Rainfall ◽  
Precipitable Water ◽  
First Century ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract Factors responsible for extreme monthly rainfall over Texas and Oklahoma during May 2015 are assessed. The event had a return period of at least 400 years, in contrast to the prior record, which was roughly a 100-yr event. The event challenges attribution science to disentangle factors because it occurred during a strong El Niño, a natural pattern of variability that affects the region’s springtime rains, and during the warmest global mean temperatures since 1880. Effects of each factor are diagnosed, as is the interplay between El Niño dynamics and human-induced climate change. Analysis of historical climate simulations reveals that El Niño was a necessary condition for monthly rains to occur having the severity of May 2015. The model results herein further reveal that a 2015 magnitude event, whether conditioned on El Niño or not, was made neither more intense nor more likely to be due to human-induced climate change over the past century. The intensity of extreme May rainfall over Texas and Oklahoma , analogous to the 2015 event, increases by roughly 5% by the latter half of the twenty-first century. No material changes occur in either El Niño–related teleconnections or in overall atmospheric dynamics during extreme May rainfall over the twenty-first century. The increased severity of Texas/Oklahoma May rainfall events in the future is principally due to thermodynamic driving, although much less than implied by simple Clausius–Clapeyron scaling arguments given a projected 23% increase in atmospheric precipitable water vapor. Other thermodynamic factors are identified that act in opposition to the increase in atmospheric water vapor, thereby reducing the effectiveness of overall thermodynamic driving of extreme May rainfall changes over Texas and Oklahoma.

scholarly journals El Niño–Induced Tropical Droughts in Climate Change Projections

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (23) ◽  
pp. 6456-6476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caio A. S. Coelho ◽  
Lisa Goddard
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
El Niño ◽  
El Nino ◽  
First Century ◽  
Spatial Extent ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Projected Changes ◽  
The Tropics

Abstract El Niño brings widespread drought (i.e., precipitation deficit) to the tropics. Stronger or more frequent El Niño events in the future and/or their intersection with local changes in the mean climate toward a future with reduced precipitation would exacerbate drought risk in highly vulnerable tropical areas. Projected changes in El Niño characteristics and associated teleconnections are investigated between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For climate change models that reproduce realistic oceanic variability of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon, results suggest no robust changes in the strength or frequency of El Niño events. These models exhibit realistic patterns, magnitude, and spatial extent of El Niño–induced drought patterns in the twentieth century, and the teleconnections are not projected to change in the twenty-first century, although a possible slight reduction in the spatial extent of droughts is indicated over the tropics as a whole. All model groups investigated show similar changes in mean precipitation for the end of the twenty-first century, with increased precipitation projected between 10°S and 10°N, independent of the ability of the models to replicate ENSO variability. These results suggest separability between climate change and ENSO-like climate variability in the tropics. As El Niño–induced precipitation drought patterns are not projected to change, the observed twentieth-century variability is used in combination with model-projected changes in mean precipitation for assessing year-to-year drought risk in the twenty-first century. Results suggest more locally consistent changes in regional drought risk among models with good fidelity in reproducing ENSO variability.

scholarly journals Will There Be a Significant Change to El Niño in the Twenty-First Century?

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 2129-2145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Stevenson ◽  
Baylor Fox-Kemper ◽  
Markus Jochum ◽  
Richard Neale ◽  
Clara Deser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
El Niño ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Ocean Dynamics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Climate System Model ◽  
Enso Variability ◽  
Tropical Variability ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) response to anthropogenic climate change is assessed in the following 1° nominal resolution Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) simulations: twentieth-century ensemble, preindustrial control, twenty-first-century projections, and stabilized 2100–2300 “extension runs.” ENSO variability weakens slightly with CO2; however, various significance tests reveal that changes are insignificant at all but the highest CO2 levels. Comparison with the 1850 control simulation suggests that ENSO changes may become significant on centennial time scales; the lack of signal in the twentieth- versus twenty-first-century ensembles is due to their limited duration. Changes to the mean state are consistent with previous studies: a weakening of the subtropical wind stress curl, an eastward shift of the tropical convective cells, a reduction in the zonal SST gradient, and an increase in vertical thermal stratification take place as CO2 increases. The extratropical thermocline deepens throughout the twenty-first century, with the tropical thermocline changing slowly in response. The adjustment time scale is set by the relevant ocean dynamics, and the delay in its effect on ENSO variability is not diminished by increasing ensemble size. The CCSM4 results imply that twenty-first-century simulations may simply be too short for identification of significant tropical variability response to climate change. An examination of atmospheric teleconnections, in contrast, shows that the remote influences of ENSO do respond rapidly to climate change in some regions, particularly during boreal winter. This suggests that changes to ENSO impacts may take place well before changes to oceanic tropical variability itself become significant.

The role of El Niño Southern Oscillation on the patterns of cycling rates observed over India during the monsoon season

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 696-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. V. Lakshmi Kumar ◽  
K. Koteswara Rao ◽  
R. Uma ◽  
K. Aruna
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapor ◽  
El Niño ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Monsoon Season ◽  
Precipitable Water ◽  
Spatiotemporal Variability ◽  
Monsoon Period ◽  
Sw Monsoon

Trend and interannual variability of total integrated precipitable water vapor (PWV) has been studied over India for the period 1979–2004 using NCEP/National Centre for Atmospheric Research reanalysis data with 2.5° × 2.5° resolution. The spatiotemporal variability of cycling rates (CR; units: per day), obtained from the ratio of rainfall to the PWV were presented not only for the long term (1979–2004) but also during El Niño (EN) and La Niña (LN) years of the study period to understand the intensity of hydrological cycle. The paper then dwells on obtaining the monthly atmospheric residences times over India to infer the stay of water vapor before it precipitates. The results of the present study are: all India PWV shows decreasing trend in association with the increasing/decreasing trends of Niño 3 SST/Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) for the southwest (SW) monsoon period of 1979–2004; the spatial pattern of temporal correlations of CR with SOI and Niño 3 SST displayed the significant positive and negative values in peninsular and central Indian portions of India respectively; all India atmospheric residence times varied from 9 to 2 days from premonsoon/post monsoon to SW monsoon over India.

Robust twenty-first-century projections of El Niño and related precipitation variability

Nature ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 502 (7472) ◽  
pp. 541-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Power ◽  
François Delage ◽  
Christine Chung ◽  
Greg Kociuba ◽  
Kevin Keay
Keyword(s):  
El Niño ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Precipitation Variability ◽  
First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century

scholarly journals ENSO in the CMIP5 Simulations: Life Cycles, Diversity, and Responses to Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 775-801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Chen ◽  
Mark A. Cane ◽  
Andrew T. Wittenberg ◽  
Dake Chen
Keyword(s):  
El Niño ◽  
Natural Variation ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Phase Locking ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
La Niña ◽  
First Century ◽  
La Nina ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Projected Changes

Focusing on ENSO seasonal phase locking, diversity in peak location, and propagation direction, as well as the El Niño–La Niña asymmetry in amplitude, duration, and transition, a set of empirical probabilistic diagnostics (EPD) is introduced to investigate how the ENSO behaviors reflected in SST may change in a warming climate. EPD is first applied to estimate the natural variation of ENSO behaviors. In the observations El Niños and La Niñas mainly propagate westward and peak in boreal winter. El Niños occur more at the eastern Pacific whereas La Niñas prefer the central Pacific. In a preindustrial control simulation of the GFDL CM2.1 model, the El Niño–La Niña asymmetry is substantial. La Niña characteristics generally agree with observations but El Niño’s do not, typically propagating eastward and showing no obvious seasonal phase locking. So an alternative approach is using a stochastically forced simulation of a nonlinear data-driven model, which exhibits reasonably realistic ENSO behaviors and natural variation ranges. EPD is then applied to assess the potential changes of ENSO behaviors in the twenty-first century using CMIP5 models. Other than the increasing SST climatology, projected changes in many aspects of ENSO reflected in SST anomalies are heavily model dependent and generally within the range of natural variation. Shifts favoring eastward-propagating El Niño and La Niña are the most robust. Given various model biases for the twentieth century and lack of sufficient model agreements for the twenty-first-century projection, whether the projected changes for ENSO behaviors would actually take place remains largely uncertain.

scholarly journals Ocean Processes Affecting the Twenty-First-Century Shift in ENSO SST Variability

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (19) ◽  
pp. 6861-6879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Guan ◽  
Michael J. McPhaden
Keyword(s):  
El Niño ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Eastern Pacific ◽  
Enso Cycle ◽  
Central Pacific ◽  
Temperature Variance ◽  
Sst Variability ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract Sea surface temperature (SST) variability associated with El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) slightly increased in the central Pacific Ocean but weakened significantly in the eastern Pacific at the beginning of twenty-first century relative to 1980–99. This decadal shift led to the greater prominence central Pacific (CP) El Niño events during the 2000s relative to the previous two decades, which were dominated by eastern Pacific (EP) events. To expand upon previous studies that have examined this shift in ENSO variability, temperature and temperature variance budgets are examined in the mixed layer of the Niño-3 (5°S–5°N, 150°–90°W) and Niño-4 (5°S–5°N, 160°E–150°W) regions from seven ocean model products spanning the period 1980–2010. This multimodel-product-based approach provides a robust assessment of dominant mechanisms that account for decadal changes in two key index regions. A temperature variance budget perspective on the role of thermocline feedbacks in the ENSO cycle based on recharge oscillator theory is also presented. As found in previous studies, thermocline and zonal advective feedbacks are the most important positive feedbacks for generating ENSO SST variance, and thermodynamic damping is the largest negative feedback for damping ENSO variance. Consistent with the shift toward more CP El Niños after 2000, thermocline feedbacks experienced a substantial reduction from 1980 to 1999 and into the 2000s, while zonal advective feedbacks were less affected. Negative feedbacks likewise weakened after 2000, particularly thermal damping in the Niño-3 region and the nonlinear sink of variance in both regions.

scholarly journals The Role of Indian Ocean Warming on Extreme Rainfall in Central China During Early Summer 2020: Without El Niño Influence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yinan Cai ◽  
Zesheng Chen ◽  
Yan Du
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapor ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
El Niño ◽  
Heavy Rainfall ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Extreme Rainfall ◽  
Early Summer ◽  
Central China ◽  
Sst Warming

Abstract This study investigates the role of water vapor transport and sea surface temperature (SST) warming in the tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) on the heavy rainfall in central China during boreal early summer. In the past four decades, four significant rainfall events, in 1983, 1998, 2016, and 2020, occured in central China and caused severe floods, in which the year 2020 has the most extreme event. All four events are associated with significant TIO SST warming, associated with a strong and westward extending anomalous anticyclone on the western North Pacific (WNPAC). The anomalous winds in the northwestern flank of the WNPAC bring excess water vapor into central China. The water vapor, mainly carried from the central tropical Pacific, converges in central China and result in heavy rainfall. A theory of regional ocean-atmosphere interaction can well explain the processes, called the Indo-Western Pacific Ocean Capacitor (IPOC) effect. The WNPAC is usually associated with strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), except for the 2020 case. The 2020 event is extraordinary, without ensuring El Niño occurred in the previous winter. In 2020, the significant TIO warming sustained the anomalous WNPAC, inducing the most significant extreme rainfall event in central China. This study reveals that the IPOC effect can dramatically influence the East Asian climate even without involving the ENSO in the Pacific.

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