Understanding the double peaked El Niño in coupled GCMs
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Understanding the double peaked El Niño in coupled GCMs

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  • Journal Title:
    Climate Dynamics
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
  • Description:
    Coupled general circulation models (CGCMs) simulate a diverse range of El Niño–Southern Oscillation behaviors. “Double peaked” El Niño events—where two separate centers of positive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies evolve concurrently in the eastern and western equatorial Pacific—have been evidenced in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project version 5 CGCMs and are without precedent in observations. The characteristic CGCM double peaked El Niño may be mistaken for a central Pacific warming event in El Niño composites, shifted westwards due to the cold tongue bias. In results from the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator coupled model, we find that the western Pacific warm peak of the double peaked El Niño event emerges due to an excessive westward extension of the climatological cold tongue, displacing the region of strong zonal SST gradients towards the west Pacific. A coincident westward shift in the zonal current anomalies reinforces the western peak in SST anomalies, leading to a zonal separation between the warming effect of zonal advection (in the west Pacific) and that of vertical advection (in the east Pacific). Meridional advection and net surface heat fluxes further drive growth of the western Pacific warm peak. Our results demonstrate that understanding historical CGCM El Niño behaviors is a necessary precursor to interpreting projections of future CGCM El Niño behaviors, such as changes in the frequency of eastern Pacific El Niño events, under global warming scenarios.
  • Source:
    Climate Dynamics, 48(5-6), 2045-2063
  • DOI:
  • ISSN:
    0930-7575;1432-0894;
  • Format:
    PDF
  • Publisher:
    Springer Science and Business Media LLC
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • Rights Information:
    Accepted Manuscript
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    The NOAA IR provides access to this content under the authority of the government's retained license to distribute publications and data resulting from federal funding. While users may legally access this content, the copyright owners retain rights that govern the reproduction, redistribution, and re-use of this work. The user is solely responsible for complying with applicable copyright law.
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    Submitted
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