Nonlinearity in the tropospheric pathway of ENSO to the North Atlantic ...

• Main Authors: Jiménez Esteve, Bernat, Domeisen, Daniela
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: ETH Zurich 2020
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000413600; http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/413600

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) can exert a remote impact on North Atlantic and European (NAE) winter climate. This teleconnection is driven by the superposition and interaction of different influences, which are generally grouped into two main pathways, namely the tropospheric and stratospheric pathways. In this study, we focus on the tropospheric pathway through the North Pacific and across the North American continent. Due to the possible nonstationary behavior and the limited time period covered by reanalysis datasets, the potential nonlinearity of this pathway remains unclear. In order to address this question, we use a simplified physics atmospheric model forced with seasonally varying prescribed sea surface temperatures (SST) following the evolution of different ENSO phases with linearly varying strength at a fixed location. To isolate the tropospheric pathway the zonal mean stratospheric winds are nudged towards the model climatology. The model experiments indicate that the tropospheric ... : Weather and Climate Dynamics, 1 (1) ...