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Interannual variability associated with ENSO: present and future climate projections of RegCM4 for South America-CORDEX domain

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Abstract

Interannual variability over South America (SA) is mainly controlled by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. This study investigates the ENSO precipitation signal during austral spring (September–October–November-SON) over SA. Three global circulation models-GCMs-(MPI, GFDL and HadGEM2) are used for RegCM4 (Regional Climate Model version 4) downscaling of the present (1975–2005) near-future (2020–2050) and far-future (2070–2098) climates using two greenhouse gas stabilization scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). For the present climate, only HadGEM2 simulates a frequency of El Niño (EN) and La Niña (LN) years similar to the observations. In terms of ENSO frequency changes, only in the far-future RCP8.5 climate there is greater agreement among GCMs, indicating an increase (decrease) of EN (LN) years. In the present climate, validation indicates that only the RegCM4 ensemble mean provides acceptable precipitation biases (smaller than ±20 %) in the two investigated regions. In this period, the GCMs and RegCM4 agree on the relationship between ENSO and precipitation in SA, i.e., both are able to capture the observed regions of positive/negative rainfall anomalies during EN years, with RegCM4 improving on the GCMs’ signal over southeastern SA. For the near and far future climates, in general, the projections indicate an increase (decrease) of precipitation over southeastern SA (northern-northeastern SA). However, the relationship between ENSO and rainfall in most of RegCM4 and GCM members is weaker in the near and far future climates than in the present day climate. This is likely connected with the GCMs’ projection of the more intense ENSO signal displaced to the central basin of Pacific Ocean in the far future compared to present climate.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank CNPq (155700/2010-3 and 307202/2011-9), CAPES/PROCAD-179/2007, INCLINE-USP and CMIP5. This work has been partially funded by the Project Next Data of the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research, and the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Rosmeri Porfírio da Rocha, Lívia Márcia Mosso Dutra & Marta Pereira Llopart

  2. Natural Resources Institute, Federal University of Itajubá, Itajubá, Brazil

    Michelle Simões Reboita

  3. Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

    Erika Coppola

Authors
  1. Rosmeri Porfírio da Rocha
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  2. Michelle Simões Reboita
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  3. Lívia Márcia Mosso Dutra
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  4. Marta Pereira Llopart
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  5. Erika Coppola
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rosmeri Porfírio da Rocha.

Additional information

This article is part of a Special Issue on "The Phase I CORDEX RegCM4 Experiment MAtrix (CREMA)" edited by Filippo Giorgi, William Gutowski, and Ray W. Arritt.

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da Rocha, R.P., Reboita, M.S., Dutra, L.M.M. et al. Interannual variability associated with ENSO: present and future climate projections of RegCM4 for South America-CORDEX domain. Climatic Change 125, 95–109 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1119-y

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