Erratum to: Understanding the SAM influence on the South Pacific ENSO teleconnection

Abstract

In the aforementioned contribution, an error was noted in the calculation of the expected values for the columns labeled ‘1970s’ and ‘1990s’ in Table 1, which also changes the Chi-squared probability of independence. For the 1970s, the changes in expected counts result in no significant relationship between the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), which is consistent with the nearly even distribution of the many La Nina events in that decade between SAM positive, SAM neutral, and SAM negative events (Table 1). As a result, our original conclusion of a significant relationship between ENSO and SAM in the 1970s is incorrect. In the 1990s, the Chi-squared probability changed to p 0.07, still suggesting a moderately strong relationship between ENSO and SAM in this decade. This relationship is brought about by in phase events occurring more often than expected by chance and out of phase events occurring less often than expected by chance, as identified in original manuscript. A corrected version of Table 1 appears below.