Understanding ENSO Diversity

Antonietta Capotondi (1) , Andrew T. Wittenberg (2) , Matthew Newman (1) , Emanuele Di Lorenzo (3) , Jin-Yi Jin (4) , Pascale Braconnot (5, 6) , Julia Cole , Boris Dewitte (7) , Benjamin Giese (8) , Éric Guilyardi (9, 10) , Fei-Fei Jin (11) , Kristopher Karnauskas (12) , Benjamin Kirtman , Tong Lee (13) , Niklas Schneider (14) , Yan Xue , Sang-Wook Yeh

1 ESRL - NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory
2 GFDL - NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
3 LMS - LMS International [Leuven]
4 SYSU - Sun Yat-sen University [Guangzhou]
5 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
6 MERMAID - Modelling the Earth Response to Multiple Anthropogenic Interactions and Dynamics
7 LEGOS - Laboratoire d'études en Géophysique et océanographie spatiales
8 Department of Oceanography [College Station]
9 PARVATI - Processus de la variabilité climatique tropicale et impacts
10 NCAS-Climate [Reading]
11 UMPA-ENSL - Unité de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées
12 WHOI - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
13 IES Sinica - Institute of Earth Sciences [Tapei]
14 LASP - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics [Boulder]

El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a naturally occurring mode of tropical Pacific variability, with global impacts on society and natural ecosystems. While it has long been known that El Niño events display a diverse range of amplitudes, triggers, spatial patterns, and life cycles, the realization that ENSO’s impacts can be highly sensitive to this event-to-event diversity is driving a renewed interest in the subject. This paper surveys our current state of knowledge of ENSO diversity, identifies key gaps in understanding, and outlines some promising future research directions.

Domaines: Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]

Antonietta Capotondi, Andrew T. Wittenberg, Matthew Newman, Emanuele Di Lorenzo, Jin-Yi Jin, et al.. Understanding ENSO Diversity. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2015, 96 (6), pp.921 - 938. ⟨10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00117.1⟩. ⟨hal-01491293⟩