Resolving the Tropical Pacific/Atlantic Interaction Conundrum

Jiang, Feng; Zhang, Wenjun; Jin, Fei‐Fei; Stuecker, Malte F.; Timmermann, Axel; McPhaden, Michael J.; Boucharel, Julien; Wittenberg, Andrew T.

doi:10.1029/2023gl103777

i

Resolving the Tropical Pacific/Atlantic Interaction Conundrum

Supporting Files

2023
By Jiang, Feng ; Zhang, Wenjun ; Jin, Fei‐Fei ; ...

Details

Journal Title:

Geophysical Research Letters
Personal Author:

Jiang, Feng ; Zhang, Wenjun ; Jin, Fei‐Fei ; Stuecker, Malte F. ; Timmermann, Axel ; McPhaden, Michael J. ; Boucharel, Julien ; Wittenberg, Andrew T.
NOAA Program & Office:

OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; GFDL (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory) ; PMEL (Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory)
Description:

Understanding the interaction between the tropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans has challenged the climate community for decades. Typically, boreal summer Atlantic Niño events are followed by vigorous Pacific events of opposite sign around two seasons later. However, incorporating the equatorial Atlantic information to variabilities internal to the Pacific lends no significant additional predictive skill for the subsequent El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Here we resolve this conundrum in a physically consistent frame, in which the nascent onset of a Pacific event rapidly induces an opposite‐signed summer equatorial Atlantic event and the lead correlation of Atlantic over Pacific is a statistical artifact of ENSO's autocorrelation. This Pacific‐to‐Atlantic impact is limited to a short window around late spring due to seasonally‐amplified Atlantic atmosphere‐ocean coupling. This new frame reconciles the discrepancies between the observed and multi‐model simulated inter‐basin relationship, providing a major advance in understanding seasonally‐modulated inter‐basin climate connections as well as their predictability.
Keywords:

General Earth And Planetary Sciences Geophysics General Earth And Planetary Sciences General Earth And Planetary Sciences
Source:

Geophysical Research Letters, 50(13)
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1029/2023gl103777
ISSN:

0094-8276 ; 1944-8007
Publisher:

American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Document Type:

Journal Article
Funding:

Grant no. NA20OAR4310445
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY-NC-ND
Compliance:

Library
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha256:8797893b69bcb5f375ad7d7c20d1b1864447f5be24ca539c94f0af5c9e74e36b
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/59321/noaa_59321_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 1.30 MB ]

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