The Role of Sea Surface Temperatures in Interactions between ENSO and the North Pacific Oscillation

Abstract

The North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) is a decadal to interdecadal fluctuation of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the North Pacific. Previous works have shown that during individual El Nino and La Nina winters, atmospheric circulation anomalies over North America are characteristically different for different phases of the NPO. Two physical mechanisms could account for this observed link between North Pacific SSTs and ENSO's effects over North America: 1) NPO SSTs could force changes in the overlying atmosphere that modulate ENSO's effects, and 2) the atmosphere could undergo internal variability that both modulates ENSO's effects and imprints a characteristic pattern of North Pacific SSTs. The first mechanism suggests methods for increasing the skill of seasonal climate predictions by incorporating the state of the North Pacific, using simple persistence of SSTs if nothing else. The second mechanism implies that North Pacific SSTs add no information that could be used to improve seasonal climate predictions of ENSO's effects. Analysis of a 300-yr run of a coupled ocean-atmosphere model shows that it exhibits links between NPO and ENSO similar to those observed. It is found that specifying NPO SSTs does not force these links. This suggests that the association found between NPO SSTs and ENSO's effects is primarily due to the fact that both are responding to the same internal atmospheric variability. In such a case, incorporating accurate predictions of NPO SSTs into ENSO prediction schemes would have little ability to improve forecasts of ENSO's effects.