The longitudinal location of precipitation anomalies over the equatorial Pacific shows a distinctive feature with the westernmost location for La Niña, the easternmost location for eastern Pacific (EP) El Niño, and somewhere between for central Pacific (CP) El Niño, even though the center of the sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) for La Niña is located slightly east of that of CP El Niño. The mechanisms for such a precipitation diversity were investigated through idealized model simulations and moisture and moist static energy budget analyses. It is revealed that the boundary layer convergence anomalies associated with the precipitation diversity are mainly induced by underlying SSTA through the Lindzen–Nigam mechanism, that is, their longitudinal locations are mainly controlled by the meridional and zonal distributions of the ENSO SSTA. The westward shift of the precipitation anomaly center during La Niña relative to that during CP El Niño is primarily caused by the combined effects of nonlinear zonal moist enthalpy advection anomalies and the Lindzen–Nigam mechanism mentioned above. Such a zonal diversity is further enhanced by the “convection–cloud–longwave radiation” feedback, the SST-induced latent heat flux anomalies, and the advection of mean moist enthalpy by anomalous winds. This diversity in the longitudinal location of precipitation anomalies has contributions to the diversities in the longitudinal locations of anomalous Walker circulation and western North Pacific anomalous anticyclone/cyclone among the three types of ENSO.
Cloud Radiative Feedbacks and El Niño–Southern Oscillation
Abstract Cloud radiative feedbacks are disabled via “cloud-locking” in the Community Earth System Model, version 1.2 (CESM1.2), to result in a shift in El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) periodicity from 2–7 years to decadal time scales. We hypothesize that cloud radiative feedbacks may impact the periodicity in three ways: by 1) modulating heat flux locally into the equatorial Pacific subsurface through negative shortwave cloud feedback on sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA), 2) damping the persistence of subtropical southeast Pacific SSTA such that the South Pacific meridional mode impacts the duration of ENSO events, or 3) controlling the meridional width of off-equatorial westerly winds, which impacts the periodicity of ENSO by initiating longer Rossby waves. The result of cloud-locking in CESM1.2 contrasts that of another study, which found that cloud-locking in a different global climate model led to decreased ENSO magnitude across all time scales due to a lack of positive longwave feedback on the anomalous Walker circulation. CESM1.2 contains this positive longwave feedback on the anomalous Walker circulation, but either its influence on the surface is decoupled from ocean dynamics or the feedback is only active on interannual time scales. The roles of cloud radiative feedbacks in ENSO in other global climate models are additionally considered. In particular, it is shown that one cannot predict the role of cloud radiative feedbacks in ENSO through a multimodel diagnostic analysis. Instead, they must be directly altered.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1650209
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10263914
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Climate
- Volume:
- 32
- Issue:
- 15
- ISSN:
- 0894-8755
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4661 to 4680
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0842.1
