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Joint effect of the North Pacific Victoria mode and the tropical Pacific on El Niño diversity

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Abstract

This study investigates possible mechanisms under what circumstances the North Pacific Victoria mode (VM) is more likely to trigger the eastern Pacific (EP) or central Pacific (CP) El Niño event. Results indicate that while positive VM events can provide the initiates to the onset of El Niño events via forcing initial warming of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies to occur in the central equatorial Pacific from springtime to summer, the changes in background conditions of the equatorial Pacific at the same period also are crucial contributors to the development of VM-EP or VM-CP El Niño events. That is when we predict the spatial patterns of El Niño events in advance, the extratropical variabilities and changes in the background conditions of the tropical Pacific should be both taken into consideration, rather than considered individually. For VM-EP El Niño cases, the significantly negative SST anomalies from the eastern tropical Pacific experience a fast transition into positive. These SST anomalies are usually accompanied by sign reversal of zonal wind anomalies near the dateline, finally together supplying favorable conditions for the eastward propagation of the initial warming anomalous SST generated by VM event. For VM-CP El Niño cases, there are also negative SST anomalies in the eastern equatorial Pacific, however, they can linger much longer than the former case and transit relatively slow to positive SST anomalies, which together along with the muted anomalous westerlies around the dateline suppress the eastward propagation of the warm SST anomalies generated by VM events. The changes of subsurface water are further in accordant to the results in the sea surface. Two simple statistical models for EP and CP El Niño prediction are derived depending on evolutionary features in both north and tropical Pacific, showing high prediction skills by 2-season in advance. These findings may provide useful insights for understanding the predictability of El Niño diversity.

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Data availability

The HadISST data set was obtained from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre (available online at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadsst3/). The atmospheric reanalysis data sets were obtained from NCEP/NCAR (available online at https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.surface.html). The circulation, subsurface ocean temperature, and surface wind stress data are from the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation system, version 2.2.4 (available online at ftp://ds1.iap.ac.cn/ftp/cheng/CZ16_v3_IAP_Temperature_gridded_1month_netcdf and http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.CARTONGIESE/.SODA/.v2p2p4/).

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41975070) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41975076).

Funding

The authors wish to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. This research was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41975070 and 41975076).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Semi-Arid Climate Change of the Ministry of Education, College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Liang Shi & Shujuan Hu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing, Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Ruiqiang Ding

  3. LASG, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Jiangyu Mao

  4. Frontiers Science Center for Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System (FDOMES)/Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography/Institute for Advanced Ocean Studies, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Jianping Li

  5. Laboratory for Ocean Dynamics and Climate, Pilot Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266237, China

    Jianping Li

  6. Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan

    Yu-heng Tseng

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  1. Liang Shi
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The manuscript war written by LS. QRD and JSH commented on initial versions of the manuscript. All other authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ruiqiang Ding.

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Shi, L., Ding, R., Hu, S. et al. Joint effect of the North Pacific Victoria mode and the tropical Pacific on El Niño diversity. Clim Dyn 61, 151–168 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06550-4

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