skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Impact of the Indian Ocean Dipole on Evolution of the Subsequent ENSO: Relative Roles of Dynamic and Thermodynamic Processes
Abstract The complex interaction between the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is further investigated in this study, with a focus on the impacts of the IOD on ENSO in the subsequent year [ENSO(+1)]. The interaction between the IOD and the concurrent ENSO [ENSO(0)] can be summarized as follows: ENSO(0) can trigger and enhance the IOD, while the IOD can enhance ENSO(0) and accelerate its demise. Regarding the impacts of IOD(0) on the subsequent ENSO(+1), it is revealed that the IOD can lead to anomalous SST cooling patterns over the equatorial Pacific after the winter following the IOD, indicating the formation of a La Niña–like pattern in the subsequent year. While the SST cooling tendency associated with a positive IOD is attributable primarily to net heat flux (thermodynamic processes) from autumn to the ensuing spring, after the ensuing spring the dominant contribution comes from oceanic processes (dynamic processes) instead. From autumn to the ensuing spring, the downward shortwave flux response contributes the most to SST cooling over the central and eastern Pacific, due to the cloud–radiation–SST feedback. From the ensuing winter to the ensuing summer, changes in latent heat flux (LHF) are important for SST cooling, indicating that the release of LHF from the ocean into the atmosphere increases due to strong evaporation and leads to SST cooling through the wind–evaporation–SST feedback. The wind stress response and thermocline shoaling verify that local Bjerknes feedback is crucial for the initiation of La Niña in the later stage.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2006553
PAR ID:
10320793
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Climate
Volume:
34
Issue:
9
ISSN:
0894-8755
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract The Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly (SSTA) in tropical Atlantic during boreal spring and summer shows two dominant modes: a basin-warming and a meridional dipole mode, respectively. Observational and coupled model simulations indicate that the former induces a Pacific La Niña in the succeeding winter whereas the latter cannot. The basin-warming forcing induces a La Niña through a Kelvin wave response and the associated wind-evaporation-SST-convection (WESC) feedback over the northern Indian Ocean (NIO) and Maritime Continent (MC). Anomalous Kelvin wave easterly interacts with the monsoonal westerly, leading to a warm SSTA and a northwest-southeast oriented heating anomaly in NIO/MC, which further induces easterly and cold SSTA over the equatorial Pacific. In contrast, the dipole forcing has little impact on the Indian and Pacific Oceans due to the offsetting of the Kelvin wave to the asymmetric Atlantic heating. Further observational and modeling studies towards the Tropical North Atlantic (TNA) and Equatorial Atlantic (EA) SSTA modes indicate that the TNA (EA) forcing induces a CP- (EP-) type ENSO. In both cases, the Kelvin wave response and the WESC feedback over the NIO/MC are important in conveying the Atlantic’s impact. The difference lies in distinctive Rossby wave responses – A marked westerly anomaly appears in the equatorial eastern Pacific (EEP) for the TNA forcing (due to its westward location) while no significant wind response is observed in EEP for the EA forcing. The westerly anomaly prevents a cooling tendency in EEP through anomalous zonal and vertical advection according to a mixed-layer heat budget analysis. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract Low clouds frequent the subtropical northeastern Pacific Ocean (NEP) and interact with the local sea surface temperature (SST) to form positive feedback. Wind fluctuations drive SST variability through wind–evaporation–SST (WES) feedback, and surface evaporation also acts to damp SST. This study investigates the relative contributions of these feedbacks to NEP SST variability. Over the summer NEP, the low cloud–SST feedback is so large that it exceeds the evaporative damping and amplifies summertime SST variations. The WES feedback causes the locally enhanced SST variability to propagate southwestward from the NEP low cloud deck, modulating El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) occurrence upon reaching the equator. As a result, a second-year El Niño tends to occur when there are significant warm SST anomalies over the subtropical NEP in summer following an antecedent El Niño event and a second-year La Niña tends to occur when there are significant cold SST anomalies over the subtropical NEP in summer following an antecedent La Niña event The mediating role of the NEP low cloud–SST feedback is confirmed in a cloud-locking experiment with the Community Earth System Model, version 1 (CESM1). When the cloud–ocean coupling is disabled, SST variability over the NEP weakens and the modulating effect on ENSO vanishes. The nonlocal effect of the NEP low cloud–SST feedback on ENSO has important implications for climate prediction. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) exhibits highly asymmetric temporal evolutions between its warm and cold phases. While El Niño events usually terminate rapidly after their mature phase and show an already established transition into the cold phase by the following summer, many La Niña events tend to persist throughout the second year and even reintensify in the ensuing winter. While many mechanisms were proposed, no consensus has been reached yet and the essential physical processes responsible for the multiyear behavior of La Niña remain to be illustrated. Here, we show that a unique ocean physical process operates during multiyear La Niña events. It is characterized by rapid double reversals of zonal ocean current anomalies in the equatorial Pacific and exhibits a fairly regular near-annual periodicity. Mixed-layer heat budget analyses reveal comparable contributions of the thermocline and zonal advective feedbacks to the SST anomaly growth in the first year of multiyear La Niña events; however, the zonal advective feedback plays a dominant role in the reintensification of La Niña events. Furthermore, the unique ocean process is identified to be closely associated with the preconditioning heat content state in the central to eastern equatorial Pacific before the first year of La Niña, which has been shown in previous studies to play an active role in setting the stage for the future reintensification of La Niña. Despite systematic underestimation, the above oceanic process can be broadly reproduced by state-of-the-art climate models, providing a potential additional source of predictability for the multiyear La Niña events. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract Previous studies have found that Northern Hemisphere aerosol‐like cooling induces a La Niña‐like response in the tropical Indo‐Pacific. Here, we explore how a coupled ocean‐atmosphere feedback pathway communicates and sustains this response. We override ocean surface wind stress in a comprehensive climate model to decompose the total ocean‐atmosphere response to forced extratropical cooling into the response of surface buoyancy forcing alone and surface momentum forcing alone. In the subtropics, the buoyancy‐forced response dominates: the positive low cloud feedback amplifies sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies which wind‐driven evaporative cooling communicates to the tropics. In the equatorial Indo‐Pacific, buoyancy‐forced ocean dynamics cool the surface while the Bjerknes feedback creates zonally asymmetric SST patterns. Although subtropical cloud feedbacks are model‐dependent, our results suggest this feedback pathway is robust across a suite of models such that models with a stronger subtropical low cloud response exhibit a stronger La Niña response. 
    more » « less
  5. The temporal evolution of El Niño and La Niña varies greatly from event to event. To understand the dynamical processes controlling the duration of El Niño and La Niña events, a suite of observational data and a long control simulation of the Community Earth System Model, version 1, are analyzed. Both observational and model analyses show that the duration of El Niño is strongly affected by the timing of onset. El Niño events that develop early tend to terminate quickly after the mature phase because of the early arrival of delayed negative oceanic feedback and fast adjustments of the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans to the tropical Pacific Ocean warming. The duration of La Niña events is, on the other hand, strongly influenced by the amplitude of preceding warm events. La Niña events preceded by a strong warm event tend to persist into the second year because of large initial discharge of the equatorial oceanic heat content and delayed adjustments of the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans to the tropical Pacific cooling. For both El Niño and La Niña, the interbasin sea surface temperature (SST) adjustments reduce the anomalous SST gradient toward the tropical Pacific and weaken surface wind anomalies over the western equatorial Pacific, hastening the event termination. Other factors external to the dynamics of El Niño–Southern Oscillation, such as coupled variability in the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans and atmospheric variability over the North Pacific, also contribute to the diversity of event duration. 
    more » « less