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Nonlinear precipitation response to El Niño and global warming in the Indo-Pacific

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Abstract

Precipitation changes over the Indo-Pacific during El Niño events are studied using an Atmospheric General Circulation Model forced with sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies and changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Linear increases in the amplitude of the El Niño SST anomaly pattern trigger nonlinear changes in precipitation amounts, resulting in shifts in the location and orientation of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ). In particular, the maximum precipitation anomaly along the ITCZ and SPCZ shifts eastwards, the ITCZ shifts south towards the equator, and the SPCZ becomes more zonal. Precipitation in the equatorial Pacific also increases nonlinearly. The effect of increasing CO2 levels and warming SSTs is also investigated. Global warming generally enhances the tropical Pacific precipitation response to El Niño. The precipitation response to El Niño is found to be dominated by changes in the atmospheric mean circulation dynamics, whereas the response to global warming is a balance between dynamic and thermodynamic changes. While the dependence of projected climate change impacts on seasonal variability is well-established, this study reveals that the impact of global warming on Pacific precipitation also depends strongly on the magnitude of the El Niño event. The magnitude and structure of the precipitation changes are also sensitive to the spatial structure of the global warming SST pattern.

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Notes

  1. Available from http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/projects/amip/AMIP2EXPDSN/BCS/amipobs_dwnld.php.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Pacific-Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning Program (PACC–SAP), a program supported by AusAID in collaboration with the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and delivered by the Bureau of Meteorology and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). We would like to thank the anonymous referees, Josephine Brown, Dietmar Dommenget, and Brad Murphy for very helpful comments on the manuscript. We would also like to thank Malek Ghantous for help in configuring the ACCESS model, Greg Kociuba for additional CMIP3 data analysis, François Delage for providing useful data visualisation routines, and Aurel Moise for useful discussions. We acknowledge the modeling groups, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model dataset. Support of this dataset is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy.

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  1. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Bureau of Meteorology, GPO Box 1289, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Christine T. Y. Chung, Scott B. Power, Julie M. Arblaster & Gregory L. Roff

  2. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, VIC, Australia

    Harun A. Rashid

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  1. Christine T. Y. Chung
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Correspondence to Christine T. Y. Chung.

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Chung, C.T.Y., Power, S.B., Arblaster, J.M. et al. Nonlinear precipitation response to El Niño and global warming in the Indo-Pacific. Clim Dyn 42, 1837–1856 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1892-8

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