Publications des scientifiques de l'IRD

Yeh S. W., Kug J. S., Dewitte Boris, Kwon M. H., Kirtman B. P., Jin F. F. (2009). El Nino in a changing climate. Nature, 461 (7263), p. 511-514. ISSN 0028-0836.

Titre du document
El Nino in a changing climate
Année de publication
2009
Type de document
Article référencé dans le Web of Science WOS:000270082900037
Auteurs
Yeh S. W., Kug J. S., Dewitte Boris, Kwon M. H., Kirtman B. P., Jin F. F.
Source
Nature, 2009, 461 (7263), p. 511-514 ISSN 0028-0836
El Nino events, characterized by anomalous warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, have global climatic teleconnections and are the most dominant feature of cyclic climate variability on subdecadal timescales. Understanding changes in the frequency or characteristics of El Nino events in a changing climate is therefore of broad scientific and socioeconomic interest. Recent studies(1-5) show that the canonical El Nino has become less frequent and that a different kind of El Nino has become more common during the late twentieth century, in which warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the central Pacific are flanked on the east and west by cooler SSTs. This type of El Nino, termed the central Pacific El Nino (CP-El Nino; also termed the dateline El Nino(2), El Nino Modoki(3) or warm pool El Nino(5)), differs from the canonical eastern Pacific El Nino (EP-El Nino) in both the location of maximum SST anomalies and tropical-midlatitude teleconnections. Here we show changes in the ratio of CP-El Nino to EP-El Nino under projected global warming scenarios from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 multi-model data set(6). Using calculations based on historical El Nino indices, we find that projections of anthropogenic climate change are associated with an increased frequency of the CP-El Nino compared to the EP-El Nino. When restricted to the six climate models with the best representation of the twentieth-century ratio of CP-El Nino to EP-El Nino, the occurrence ratio of CP-El Nino/EP-El Nino is projected to increase as much as five times under global warming. The change is related to a flattening of the thermocline in the equatorial Pacific.
Plan de classement
Limnologie physique / Océanographie physique [032]
Localisation
Fonds IRD [F B010048207]
Identifiant IRD
fdi:010048207
Contact