Effects of Salinity Variability on Recent El Niño Events

Abstract

Ocean salinity variability provides a new way to study the evolution of the the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Comparisons between the salinity variation and related processes responsible for sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) were extensively examined for the two strong El Niño (EN) events in 1997/1998 and 2015/2016, and a special EN event in 2014/2015. The results show that the development of EN is significantly correlated with a sea surface salinity anomaly (SSSA) in the tropical western-central Pacific. In the spring of 1997 and 2015 with strong EN events, the western-central equatorial Pacific exhibited significant negative SSSA that propagated eastward to the west of the dateline. The negative SSSA induced increased barrier layer thickness (BLT) which enhanced sea surface temperature (SST) warming in the tropical central Pacific. In contrast, although a negative SSSA occurred during April of the 2014/2015 weak EN event in the western-central equatorial Pacific, this SSSA was mainly confined to between 160° E and 180° E without significant eastward movement, resulting in a weakened BLT thickening process and a weak modulation effect on SST. We also confirm that the surface forcing associated with fresh water flux (FWF: evaporation (E) minus precipitation (P)) plays a prominent role in the surface salinity tendency in the tropical Pacific during EN events. Moreover, the negative FWF anomaly leads a strong negative SSSA by two months. Compared with the two strong ENs, the early negative FWF anomaly in the weak 2014/2015 EN did not present distinct development and eastward propagation and weakened rapidly in the summer of 2015. We demonstrate that change in salinity can modulate the ENSO, and the variation of SSSA and associated physical processes in the tropical western-central Pacific and could be used as an indicator for predicting the development of ENSO.