El Niño and its relationship to changing background conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean
Abstract
This paper addresses the question of whether the increased occurrence of central Pacific (CP) versus Eastern Pacific (EP) El Niños is consistent with greenhouse gas forced changes in the background state of the tropical Pacific as inferred from global climate change models. Our analysis uses high‐quality satellite and in situ ocean data combined with wind data from atmospheric reanalyses for the past 31 years (1980–2010). We find changes in background conditions that are opposite to those expected from greenhouse gas forcing in climate models and opposite to what is expected if changes in the background state are mediating more frequent occurrences of CP El Niños. A plausible interpretation of these results is that the character of El Niño over the past 31 years has varied naturally and that these variations projected onto changes in the background state because of the asymmetric spatial structures of CP and EP El Niños.
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Later studies indicate that the trend of growing intensity of central Pacific warming events likely arises from unresolved natural decadal variability.
“though later studies indicate that this trend likely arises from unresolved natural decadal variability [McPhaden et al., 2011;Yeh et al., 2011].”
From Impacts of canonical and Modoki El Niño on tropical Atlantic SST (2014) · cites this paper as McPhaden et al., 2011
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Cai, W., Santoso, A., Wang, G., Yeh, S.-W., An, S.-I., Cobb, K. M., Collins, M., Guilyardi, E., Jin, F.-F., Kug, J.-S., et al. (2015) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/nclimate2743 · Cited by 891 · see citing works
Self-citationRobust decrease in El Niño/Southern Oscillation amplitude under long-term warming
Callahan, C. W., Chen, C., Rugenstein, M., Bloch-Johnson, J., Yang, S., & Moyer, E. J. (2021) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-021-01099-2 · Cited by 87 · see citing works
Impacts of canonical and Modoki El Niño on tropical Atlantic SST
Amaya, D. J., & Foltz, G. R. (2014) · Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans · doi:10.1002/2013jc009476 · Cited by 63 · see citing works
- Authors
- McPhaden, M. J., Lee, T., & McClurg, D.
- Affiliations
- NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (US)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2011-08
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 15
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W2127171417
- Cited by
- 403
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 42 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 31 · 2015: 32 · 2014: 45 · 2013: 33 · 2012: 27
- FWCI
- 29.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Oceanography › Oceanographic and Atmospheric Processes
- Keywords
- El Niño, central Pacific El Niño, eastern Pacific El Niño, greenhouse gas forcing, climate change models, natural variation, atmospheric reanalysis, sea surface temperature, wind patterns
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