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Occurrence of two types of El Niño events and the subsurface ocean temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific

  • Article
  • Atmospheric Science
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Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

The relationships between the evolution of two types of El Niño events and the subsurface ocean temperature anomaly (SOTA) in the equatorial Pacific are compared in this study. The results show that both types of El Niño are negatively correlated to the SOTA in the equatorial western Pacific, but relationships are different in different phases of El Niño. Furthermore, the occurrence of different types of El Niño is related to different features of the equatorial thermocline, e.g. its zonal gradient, significant variation area, amplitude and duration of thermocline oscillation. The propagation of SOTA in the equator plays an important role during the evolution of both types of El Niño, but shows dramatic differences in intensity, duration and phase reverse of warm SOTA. Moreover, the pathways of SOTA signal are different between these two types of El Niño. The dominant pathway in the life cycle of Eastern Pacific (EP)-El Niño lies on the equator and to its north, but there is no loop to the south of the equator. In contrast, the dominant pathway in Central Pacific (CP)-El Niño is located on the equator and to its south, and the propagation signal of SOTA to the north of the equator is very weak. The relationships between the zonal wind anomalies and the two types of El Niño are also preliminarily discussed. It is shown that EP-El Niño is more likely to respond to the westerly anomalies over the equatorial central and western Pacific, while CP-El Niño is more likely to respond to the westerly anomalies over the equatorial western Pacific and need the cooperation of easterly anomalies over the equatorial eastern Pacific to certain extent.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Jian Ling (Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) for providing some valuable suggestions and revising this paper. The authors also thank Prof. Yanke Tan, Dr. Yao Ha and Dr. Jiaxun Li for the helpful discussions. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2013CB956203).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Meteorology & Oceanography, PLA University of Science &Technology, Nanjing, 211101, China

    Xin Li & Chongyin Li

  2. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Chongyin Li

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  1. Xin Li
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Correspondence to Chongyin Li.

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Li, X., Li, C. Occurrence of two types of El Niño events and the subsurface ocean temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 3471–3483 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0365-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0365-8

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