Correlative Evolutions of ENSO and the Seasonal Cycle in the Tropical Pacific Ocean

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Abstract This study examines whether shifts between the correlative evolutions of ENSO and the seasonal cycle in the tropical Pacific Ocean can produce effects that are large enough to alter the evolution of the coupled atmosphere–ocean system. The approach is based on experiments with an ocean general circulation model (OGCM) of the Pacific basin, in which the seasonal and nonseasonal (interannually varying) components of the surface forcing are prescribed with different shifts in time. The shift would make no difference in terms of ENSO variability if the system were linear. The surface fluxes of heat and momentum used to force the ocean are taken from 1) simulations in which the OGCM coupled to an atmospheric GCM produces realistic ENSO variability and 2) NCEP reanalysis data corrected by Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set climatology for the 20-yr period 1980–99. It is found that the response to the shifts in terms of eastern basin heat content can be 20%–40% of the maximum interannual anomaly in the first experiment, whereas it is 10%–20% in the second experiment. In addition, the response to the shift is event dependent. A response of this magnitude can potentially generate coupled atmosphere–ocean interactions that alter subsequent event evolution. Analysis of a selected event shows that the major contribution to the response is provided by the anomalous zonal advection of seasonal mean temperature in the equatorial band. Additional OGCM experiments suggest that both directly forced and delayed signals provide comparable contributions to the response. An interpretation of the results based on the “delayed oscillator” paradigm and on equatorial wave–mean flow interaction is given. It is argued that the same oceanic ENSO anomalies in different times of the oceanic seasonal cycle can result in different ENSO evolutions because of nonlinear interactions between equatorially trapped waves at work during ENSO and the seasonally varying upper-ocean currents and thermocline structure.