Abstract
El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) shows a large diversity of events that is modulated by climate variability and change. The representation of this diversity in climate models limits our ability to predict their impact on ecosystems and human livelihood. Here, we use multiple observational datasets to provide a probabilistic description of historical variations in event location and intensity, and to benchmark models, before examining future system trajectories. We find robust decadal variations in event intensities and locations in century-long observational datasets, which are associated with perturbations in equatorial wind-stress and thermocline depth, as well as extra-tropical anomalies in the North and South Pacific. Some climate models are capable of simulating such decadal variability in ENSO diversity, and the associated large-scale patterns. Projections of ENSO diversity in future climate change scenarios strongly depend on the magnitude of decadal variations, and the ability of climate models to reproduce them realistically over the 21st century.
Highlights
El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) shows a large diversity of events that is modulated by climate variability and change
To overcome existing limitations in analysing ENSO diversity, this study uses multiple observational datasets to provide a probabilistic description of historical variations in event location and intensity, and to benchmark models, before examining future system trajectories
The majority of models favour either EP- or CP-ENSO, we found that ENSO diversity is closely linked to significant decadal variations in both observations and climate models
Summary
El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) shows a large diversity of events that is modulated by climate variability and change. The representation of this diversity in climate models limits our ability to predict their impact on ecosystems and human livelihood. Differences in the longitudinal location and intensity of ENSO events are sensitively associated with different impacts on regional climate throughout the world[10,11] Such differences in ENSO patterns, referred to as “ENSO diversity”[7], and their representation in climate models strongly influence the skill of impact-prediction systems[12], and underscore the need for an appropriate characterisation and further mechanistic understanding of ENSO diversity, as well as its projected changes. The relative frequency of EP- or CP-ENSO has been associated with different phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)[20,21], which may itself result from the superposition of different processes[21], and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation[22]
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