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Impacts of variations in the strength and structure of El Niño events on Pacific rainfall in CMIP5 models

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Abstract

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) plays a dominant role in interannual climate variability in Pacific island countries, directly affecting lives there. Many countries show different rainfall responses depending on the sea surface temperature (SST) structure of different types of El Nino events. El Niño events are classified into three types based on previous studies: those with strongest SST anomalies in the eastern Pacific Cold Tongue region (CTE), in the Western Pacific Warm Pool region (WPE), and those in between, a “Mixed” El Niño (MxE), and results from 30 CMIP5 models are investigated. These models accurately reproduce observed SST and precipitation anomalies for the three El Niño types and La Niña. CMIP5 models simulate much larger ranges in the strength of ENSO events than observed. Results clarify the roles of both the different structures of El Niño SST anomalies and their magnitudes on rainfall in the Pacific, and demonstrate that each of the three El Niño types has different impacts on rainfall in the region. These impacts vary with location, with WPE and CTE producing very different impacts in most Pacific island countries. There is a linear intensification of both the mean and maximum rainfall anomalies in the equatorial Pacific as the events become stronger. Equatorial rainfall shifts eastward in CTE and MxE, westward in La Niña. Both the South Pacific and Intertropical Convergence Zones (SPCZ and ITCZ) shift equatorward in El Niño and poleward in La Niña, the shifts increasing as events strengthen. WPE show different behaviour to other events, with little east-west shift in equatorial rainfall, and the orientation angle of the convergence zones increases. Identification of models with no erroneous westward bias in SST anomalies has clarified the effect of strong CTE events producing “zonal” SPCZ and shifting rainfall away to the east from western equatorial countries.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Pacific Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning Program (PACCSAP), a program supported by AusAID, in collaboration with the Department of Environment, and delivered by the Bureau of Meteorology and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The authors thank Aurel Moise and Ian Smith for constructive comments on the manuscript, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.

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

    Bradley F. Murphy, Hua Ye & François Delage

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  1. Bradley F. Murphy
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  2. Hua Ye
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  3. François Delage
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Correspondence to Bradley F. Murphy.

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Murphy, B.F., Ye, H. & Delage, F. Impacts of variations in the strength and structure of El Niño events on Pacific rainfall in CMIP5 models. Clim Dyn 44, 3171–3186 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2389-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2389-9

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