Nonlinearity and Asymmetry of the ENSO Stratospheric Pathway to North Atlantic and Europe, Revisited

Nonlinearities and asymmetries of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) stratospheric pathway to the North Atlantic and Europe are examined in large ensembles conducted with fully coupled climate models during wintertime. The analysis is centered on historical experiments of the Max Planck Institute G...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Main Authors: Manzini, E., Ayarzagüena Porras, Blanca, Calvo Fernández, Natalia, Matei, D.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/116571
https://doi.org/10.1029/2023jd039992
Description
Summary:Nonlinearities and asymmetries of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) stratospheric pathway to the North Atlantic and Europe are examined in large ensembles conducted with fully coupled climate models during wintertime. The analysis is centered on historical experiments of the Max Planck Institute Grand Ensemble (MPI-GE, 95 members) and expanded to six other ensembles of more limited size. In MPI-GE, significant responses are obtained for each ENSO phase and three different intensities (weak, moderate and strong). Overall, linear relationships are found for either El Niño or La Niña key diagnostics that characterize the pathway. These relationships are generally weaker for the cold La Niña than for the warm El Niño so that asymmetries between them develop as the events intensify. Specifically for strong events, the extra-tropical North Pacific and stratospheric responses are asymmetric, with larger responses for El Niño. In addition, the stratospheric asymmetry in strong events seems to contribute to the asymmetry in strong events in the North Atlantic—Europe response in the troposphere in late winter. The extra-tropical North Pacific response shows general agreement between MPI-GE and the other large ensembles. However, this agreement is not as large when other parts of the pathway are compared. Relatively high inter-model response spread confirms the typical model uncertainty found when examining atmospheric circulation responses which include the stratosphere in state-of-the-art climate models. Federal Ministry of Education & Research (BMBF) United States Department of Energy (DOE) German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through JPI Climate/JPI Oceans NextG-Climate Science-ROADMAP Unión Europea Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España) Projekt DEAL Depto. de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica Fac. de Ciencias Físicas TRUE pub