Abstract
The influence of the tropical Atlantic on El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is examined using dedicated climate model experiments with sea-surface temperature (SST) restoring. Partial SST restoring to climatology in the tropical Atlantic leads to slower decay of ENSO events and to a shift of the power spectrum to longer periods. Perfect model hindcast experiments with and without restoring tropical Atlantic SST to climatology indicate that both the northern tropical and equatorial Atlantic have a very small influence on ENSO development. During decaying ENSO events, on the other hand, northern tropical Atlantic SST anomalies strongly accelerate the decay. Key to the Atlantic influence on ENSO decay are Atlantic SST anomalies just north of the equator (~ 5°N). These lead to local convection anomalies that change the Walker circulation so as to accelerate ENSO decay. Importantly, anomalous events in either the northern tropical or equatorial Atlantic fail to develop in the hindcast ensemble mean, when tropical Pacific SSTs are restored to climatology. This indicates that anomalous tropical Atlantic events in boreal spring and summer are strongly dependent on preceding ENSO events in boreal winter. Thus, the role of the tropical Atlantic is to mediate a negative feedback of ENSO on itself. Despite this passive role of the tropical Atlantic in the Pacific-Atlantic interaction, accurate simulation of the Atlantic feedback should play some role in ENSO prediction. Further model experiments will be required to evaluate model dependence of these findings and to quantify the impact of the Atlantic on ENSO prediction skill.
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The CMIP6 model output analyzed in this study is made available via the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) and can be found at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/ or one of the other ESGF nodes. The ERA-5 reanalysis data is available via https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels-monthly-means?tab=form. The NCEP/NCAR reanalysis can be obtained via https://downloads.psl.noaa.gov/Datasets/ncep/.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion Science (JSPS) Kakenhi Grants. YK was supported by Grants JP18H01278 and JP19H05703, HT was supported by Grants JP18H01281, JP18H03726 and JP19H05704, and SK was supported by Grant JP21K13997. YK was also supported by Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) through the Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models (JPMXD0717935457) and the program for Advanced Studies of Climate Change Projection (JPMXD0722680395).
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This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion Science KAKENHI Grants JP18H01278, JP18H01281, JP18H03726, JP19H05703, JP19H05704, and JP21K13997, and by MEXT through the Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models (JPMXD0717935457) and Advanced Studies of Climate Change Projection (JPMXD0722680395).
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All authors discussed the results and contributed to the writing of the manuscript. IR designed the study and wrote the initial draft. IR and YK designed the GCM experiments, and YK carried out the GCM simulations. SK designed and carried out the LIM experiments. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Richter, I., Kosaka, Y., Kido, S. et al. The tropical Atlantic as a negative feedback on ENSO. Clim Dyn 61, 309–327 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06582-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06582-w