OS021-06
A review of ENSO atmospheric teleconnections in the present and future climate

Wednesday, 9 December 2020: 19:20
Virtual
Andrea Taschetto, University of New South Wales, Climate Change Research Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia; ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Sydney, Australia, Caroline Ummenhofer, WHOI, Woods Hole, MA, United States, Malte F Stuecker, IBS Center for Climate Physics, Pusan, South Korea, Dietmar Dommenget, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, Ashok Karumuri, University of Hyderabad, University Centre for Earth and Space Sciences (UCESS), Hyderabad, India, Regina Rodrigues, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, SC, Brazil and Sang-Wook Yeh, Hanyang University, Department of Marine Sciences and Convergent Technology, Ansan, South Korea
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
This study is part of the AGU Book on the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in a changing climate. We present a comprehensive review of ENSO atmospheric teleconnections. The warming in the equatorial Pacific associated with El Niño events drives changes in the Walker and Hadley circulations that affect temperature and precipitation in the tropics and extratropics. It warms the tropics and influences the sea surface temperature of neighboring ocean basins, favoring a short-term rise in global temperatures. We will discuss the main mechanisms for atmospheric teleconnections driven by ENSO and the challenges in predicting its impacts over land. Global impacts during La Niña are generally considered opposite to El Niño, however this is not an ideal approximation for all regions. ENSO asymmetry and diversity complicate the teleconnections in addition to the nonlinear nature of the atmospheric response to a warming in the equatorial Pacific. With global warming, ENSO and its atmospheric teleconnections are expected to change. In this study we discuss the projected impacts of ENSO in a warmer climate and discuss the limitations of climate models in representing the ENSO in present-day climate and implications for the future.

Reference: Taschetto, A. S., C. C. Ummenhofer, M. F. Stuecker, D. Dommenget, K. Ashok, R. R. Rodrigues, and S.-W. Yeh (2020). ENSO Atmospheric Teleconnections. In El Niño Southern Oscillation in a Changing Climate (eds M. J. McPhaden, A. Santoso, W. Cai). American Geophysical Union. in press.

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