Identification

Title

Some overlooked features of tropical atlantic climate leading to a new Nino-like phenomenon

Abstract

The Atlantic Nino, an equatorial zonal mode akin to the Pacific El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), is phase-locked to boreal summer when the equatorial easterly winds intensify and the thermocline shoals in the Gulf of Guinea. A suite of satellite and in situ observations reveals a new mode of tropical Atlantic variability that displays many characteristics of the zonal mode but instead peaks in November-December (ND). This new mode is found to be statistically independent from both the Atlantic Nino in the preceding summer and the Pacific ENSO. The origin of this ND zonal mode lies in an overlooked aspect of the seasonal cycle in the equatorial Atlantic. In November the equatorial easterly winds intensify for the second time, increasing upwelling and lifting the thermocline in the Gulf of Guinea. An analysis of high-resolution climatological data shows that these dynamical changes induce a noticeable SST cooling in the central equatorial Atlantic. The shoaling thermocline and increased upwelling enhance the SST sensitivity to surface wind changes, reinvigorating equatorial ocean-atmosphere interaction. The resultant ocean-atmospheric anomalies are organized into patterns that give rise to positive mutual feedback as Bjerknes envisioned for the Pacific ENSO. This ND zonal mode significantly affects interannual rainfall variability in coastal Congo-Angola during its early rainy season. It tends to further evolve into a meridional mode in the following March-April, affecting precipitation in northeast Brazil. Thus it offers potential predictability for climate over the Atlantic sector in early boreal winter, a season for which local ocean-atmosphere variability was otherwise poorly understood.

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document

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https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d70v8dhg

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Dataset language

eng

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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publication

effective date

2006-11-15T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2006 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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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/

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pointOfContact

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