Abstract
The far-reaching impacts of central Pacific El Niño events on global climate differ appreciably from those associated with eastern Pacific El Niño events. Central Pacific El Niño events may become more frequent in coming decades as atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations rise, but the instrumental record of central Pacific sea-surface temperatures is too short to detect potential trends. Here we present an annually resolved reconstruction of NIÑO4 sea-surface temperature, located in the central equatorial Pacific, based on oxygen isotopic time series from Taiwan tree cellulose that span from 1190 AD to 2007 AD. Our reconstruction indicates that relatively warm Niño4 sea-surface temperature values over the late twentieth century are accompanied by higher levels of interannual variability than observed in other intervals of the 818-year-long reconstruction. Our results imply that anthropogenic greenhouse forcing may be driving an increase in central Pacific El Niño-Southern Oscillation variability and/or its hydrological impacts, consistent with recent modelling studies.
Highlights
The far-reaching impacts of central Pacific El Nino events on global climate differ appreciably from those associated with eastern Pacific El Nino events
Taken together, our results suggest that anthropogenic climate change has had a profound effect on Sea-surface temperature (SST) in the central Pacific (CP), whereby anomalous warming over the last decades is accompanied by an increase in interannual variance
The global climate impacts of future CP El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) extremes will critically depend on the evolution of the mean climate state in the tropical Pacific[36,37], which itself is poorly constrained at present
Summary
The far-reaching impacts of central Pacific El Nino events on global climate differ appreciably from those associated with eastern Pacific El Nino events. We present an annually resolved reconstruction of NIN O4 sea-surface temperature, located in the central equatorial Pacific, based on oxygen isotopic time series from Taiwan tree cellulose that span from 1190 AD to 2007 AD. Our results imply that anthropogenic greenhouse forcing may be driving an increase in central Pacific El Nino-Southern Oscillation variability and/or its hydrological impacts, consistent with recent modelling studies. Recent studies distinguish between canonical El Nino events, with warming located in the central to eastern tropical Pacific, and central Pacific (CP) El Nino events, wherein warming is confined to the central tropical Pacific[1,2,3] Both CP and the East Pacific El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events have widespread impacts on global climate[4,5,6,7], including influences on western North American drought[8], East Asian monsoons[9] and hurricane properties[6]. The annual variation and variance of NIN O4 SST are relatively high during the late twentieth century likely due to anthropogenic global warming
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