El Niño-associated catastrophic coral mortality at Jarvis Island, central Equatorial Pacific

Coral Reefs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 731-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernardo Vargas-Ángel ◽  
Brittany Huntington ◽  
Russell E. Brainard ◽  
Roberto Venegas ◽  
Thomas Oliver ◽  
...  
2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 1619-1641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Feng ◽  
Tao Lian ◽  
Jun Ying ◽  
Junde Li ◽  
Gen Li

AbstractWhether the state-of-the-art CMIP5 models have different El Niño types and how the degree of modeled El Niño diversity would be impacted by the future global warming are still heavily debated. In this study, cluster analysis is used to investigate El Niño diversity in 30 CMIP5 models. As the method does not rely on any prior knowledge of the patterns of El Niño seen in observations, it provides a practical way to identify the degree of El Niño diversity in models. Under the historical scenario, most models show a poor degree of El Niño diversity in their own model world, primarily due to the lopsided numbers of events belonging to the two modeled El Niño types and the weak compactness of events in each cluster. Four models are found showing significant El Niño diversity, yet none of them captures the longitudinal distributions of the warming centers of the two El Niño types seen in the observations. Heat budget analysis of the sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly suggests that the degree of modeled El Niño diversity is highly related to the climatological zonal SST gradient over the western-central equatorial Pacific in models. As the gradient is weakened in most models under the future high-emission scenario, the degree of modeled El Niño diversity is further reduced in the future. The results indicate that a better simulation of the SST gradient over the western-central equatorial Pacific might allow a more reliable simulation/projection of El Niño diversity in most CMIP5 models.


2001 ◽  
Vol 106 (C3) ◽  
pp. 4501-4515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Turk ◽  
Marlon R. Lewis ◽  
Glen W. Harrison ◽  
Takeshi Kawano ◽  
Ichio Asanuma

Atmosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Zhi ◽  
Rong-Hua Zhang ◽  
Pengfei Lin ◽  
Shiwei Shi

Ocean salinity variability provides a new way to study the evolution of the the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Comparisons between the salinity variation and related processes responsible for sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) were extensively examined for the two strong El Niño (EN) events in 1997/1998 and 2015/2016, and a special EN event in 2014/2015. The results show that the development of EN is significantly correlated with a sea surface salinity anomaly (SSSA) in the tropical western-central Pacific. In the spring of 1997 and 2015 with strong EN events, the western-central equatorial Pacific exhibited significant negative SSSA that propagated eastward to the west of the dateline. The negative SSSA induced increased barrier layer thickness (BLT) which enhanced sea surface temperature (SST) warming in the tropical central Pacific. In contrast, although a negative SSSA occurred during April of the 2014/2015 weak EN event in the western-central equatorial Pacific, this SSSA was mainly confined to between 160° E and 180° E without significant eastward movement, resulting in a weakened BLT thickening process and a weak modulation effect on SST. We also confirm that the surface forcing associated with fresh water flux (FWF: evaporation (E) minus precipitation (P)) plays a prominent role in the surface salinity tendency in the tropical Pacific during EN events. Moreover, the negative FWF anomaly leads a strong negative SSSA by two months. Compared with the two strong ENs, the early negative FWF anomaly in the weak 2014/2015 EN did not present distinct development and eastward propagation and weakened rapidly in the summer of 2015. We demonstrate that change in salinity can modulate the ENSO, and the variation of SSSA and associated physical processes in the tropical western-central Pacific and could be used as an indicator for predicting the development of ENSO.


Science ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 222 (4621) ◽  
pp. 327-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. S. LUTHER ◽  
D. E. HARRISON ◽  
R. A. KNOX

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (14) ◽  
pp. n/a-n/a ◽  
Author(s):  
Tong Lee ◽  
Michael J. McPhaden

2018 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. S21-S26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell E. Brainard ◽  
Thomas Oliver ◽  
Michael J. McPhaden ◽  
Anne Cohen ◽  
Roberto Venegas ◽  
...  

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