Linking a sea level pressure anomaly dipole over North America to the central Pacific El Niño

• Published in: Climate Dynamics
• Other Authors: Ding, Ruiqiang (author), Li, Jianping (author), Tseng, Yu-heng (author), Sun, Cheng (author), Zheng, Fei (author)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3389-8

This study demonstrates the close connection between the north-south dipole pattern of sea level pressure anomalies over northeastern North America to the western tropical North Atlantic, referred to as the North American dipole (NAD), and the central Pacific (CP)-type El Nino a year later. In contrast to other ENSO precursors, such as the North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) and Pacific-North America (PNA) pattern, the NAD appears more closely related to the CP-type El Nino than to the eastern Pacific (EP)-type El Nino, indicating that the NAD may serve as a unique precursor for the CP El Nino. The wintertime NAD induces sea surface temperature anomalies in the northern tropical Atlantic (NTA), which subsequently play an important role in developing the CP El Nino-like pattern in the tropical Pacific over the course of the following year. It appears that the NAD influence on CP El Nino involves air-sea interaction over several major basins, including the subtropical/tropical Pacific and the NTA. Additional analysis indicates that the correlation either the NAD index or the NPO index with the CP El Nino state a year later depends on the status of the other index. When the wintertime NAD index is of the opposite sign to the simultaneous NPO index, the correlation of the NAD or NPO index with the Nino4 index becomes much weaker.