Identification

Title

Triggering of El Niño onset through trade wind-induced charging of the equatorial Pacific

Abstract

Sea surface temperature variations over the equatorial Pacific associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) produce changes in climates across the globe. Here we report evidence from observationally constrained ocean data for the initiation of warm ENSO events (El Niños) resulting from subsurface equatorial Pacific heat content increases related to tropical/extratropical sea level pressure (SLP) changes over the North Pacific. We hypothesize that the increase in heat content is a response to SLP-generated variations in the North Pacific trade winds, which we term trade wind charging of the equatorial Pacific. Experiments using a high-resolution numerical ocean model verify that the charging of subsurface heat content along the equatorial Pacific can be induced by SLP-generated trade wind variations. Furthermore, analysis of the numerical model results and historical observations indicates that the trade wind-induced ocean heat content increases are sufficiently large to initiate the onset of El Niño events, which mature approximately 12 months after the trade wind forcing itself.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7tt4rt7

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-03-28T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact