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Influences of Indian Ocean interannual variability on different stages of El Niño: A FOAM1.5 model approach

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Abstract

Both the tropical Indian and tropical Pacific Oceans are active atmosphere-ocean interactive regions with robust interannual variability, which also constitutes a linkage between the two basins in the mode of variability. Using a global atmosphere-ocean coupled model, we conducted two experiments (CTRL and PC) to explore the contributions of Indian Ocean interannual sea surface temperature (SST) modes to the occurrence of El Niño events. The results show that interannual variability of the SST in the Indian Ocean induces a rapid growth of El Niño events during the boreal autumn in an El Niño developing year. However, it weakens El Niño events or even promotes cold phase conversions in an El Niño decaying year. Therefore, the entire period of the El Niño is shortened by the interannual variations of the Indian Ocean SST. Specifically, during the El Niño developing years, the positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) events force an anomalous Walker circulation, which then enhances the existing westerly wind anomalies over the west Pacific. This will cause a warmer El Niño event, with some modulations by ocean advection and oceanic Rossby and Kelvin waves. However, with the onset of the South Asian monsoon, the Indian Ocean Basin (IOB) warming SST anomalies excite low level easterly wind anomalies over the west tropical Pacific during the El Niño decaying years. As a result, the El Niño event is prompted to change from a warm phase to a cold phase. At the same time, an associated atmospheric anticyclone anomaly appears and leads to a decreasing precipitation anomaly over the northwest Pacific. In summary, with remote forcing in the atmospheric circulation, the IOD mode usually affects the El Niño during the developing years, whereas the IOB mode affects the El Niño during the decaying years.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    XiaoYuan Hong

  2. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    XiaoYuan Hong, HaiBo Hu & XiuQun Yang

  3. School of Marine Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Yuan Zhang

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    XiaoYuan Hong

  5. Canada Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, B2Y 4A2, Canada

    HaiBo Hu & GuoQiang Liu

  6. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0210, USA

    Wei Liu

Authors
  1. XiaoYuan Hong
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  2. HaiBo Hu
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  3. XiuQun Yang
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  4. Yuan Zhang
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  5. GuoQiang Liu
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  6. Wei Liu
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Correspondence to HaiBo Hu.

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Hong, X., Hu, H., Yang, X. et al. Influences of Indian Ocean interannual variability on different stages of El Niño: A FOAM1.5 model approach. Sci. China Earth Sci. 57, 2616–2627 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-014-4932-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-014-4932-2

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