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ENSO stability in coupled climate models and its association with mean state

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Abstract

In this study, using the Bjerknes stability (BJ) index analysis, we estimate the overall linear El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) stability and the relative contribution of positive feedbacks and damping processes to the stability in historical simulations of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models. When compared with CMIP3 models, the ENSO amplitudes and the ENSO stability as estimated by the BJ index in the CMIP5 models are more converged around the observed, estimated from the atmosphere and ocean reanalysis data sets. The reduced diversity among models in the simulated ENSO stability can be partly attributed to the reduced spread of the thermocline feedback and Ekman feedback terms among the models. However, a systematic bias persists from CMIP3 to CMIP5. In other words, the majority of the CMIP5 models analyzed in this study still underestimate the zonal advective feedback, thermocline feedback and thermodynamic damping terms, when compared with those estimated from reanalysis. This discrepancy turns out to be related with a cold tongue bias in coupled models that causes a weaker atmospheric thermodynamical response to sea surface temperature changes and a weaker oceanic response (zonal currents and zonal thermocline slope) to wind changes.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling, 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 leads development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. Seon Tae Kim is supported by CSIRO Office of Chief Executive and Wealth from Oceans Flagship, and Wenju Cai is supported by the Australian Climate Change Program. Jin-Yi Yu is supported by NSF (ATM-1233542). The authors thank one anonymous reviewer and Jong-Seong Kug, Agus Santoso, and WonMoo Kim for their constructive and valuable comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, VIC, 3195, Australia

    Seon Tae Kim & Wenju Cai

  2. Department of Meteorology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Fei-Fei Jin

  3. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Jin-Yi Yu

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  1. Seon Tae Kim
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  2. Wenju Cai
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  3. Fei-Fei Jin
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  4. Jin-Yi Yu
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Correspondence to Seon Tae Kim.

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Kim, S.T., Cai, W., Jin, FF. et al. ENSO stability in coupled climate models and its association with mean state. Clim Dyn 42, 3313–3321 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1833-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1833-6

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