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- Title
El Niño Diversity Across Boreal Spring Predictability Barrier.
- Authors
Wang, Bin; Luo, Xiao; Sun, Weiyi; Yang, Young‐Min; Liu, Jian
- Abstract
El Niño exerts widespread hydroclimate impacts during boreal summer. However, the current prediction of El Niño across boreal spring has the most severe forecast errors, partially due to the lack of understanding diversified El Niño onset and decay. Here we show, through nonlinear k‐means cluster analysis of evolutions of 40 El Niño events since 1870, El Niño exhibits complex and diverse flavors in its onset and decay across boreal spring predictability barrier. We detected three types of El Niño onset and three types of decay. Each type exhibits distinct coupled dynamics, precursors, and hydroclimate impacts. The results guide the prediction of different types of El Niño transition amid spring predictability barrier and global land precipitation during early and late boreal summer. The new classification offers a metric to evaluate performances of climate models and to project future change of El Niño properties and its predictability. Plain Language Summary: El Niño exerts the most significant climate impacts on human life during boreal summer. However, the prediction of El Niño across boreal spring is most difficult, which is partially due to the lack of understanding of the diversity of El Niño onset and decay. Here we analyzed 40 El Niño events since 1870 and found that El Niño exhibits more complex and diverse flavors in its onset and decay phases than in the mature phase as in conventional analysis. We objectively detected three types of El Niño onset and three types of decay. Each type exhibits distinct physical mechanisms, precursors, and climate impacts. Our results provide clues to predict El Niño transition across spring and offer a metric to evaluate climate models' performance and to project future change of El Niño. Key Points: El Niño exhibits complex diversity in its onset and decay phases across the boreal spring predictability barrierDifferent types of onset/decay processes exhibit distinctive precursors that can foresee different types of El Niño transition in AprilDifferent types of onset/decay show distinct impacts on global land precipitation during early and late boreal summer
- Subjects
EL Nino; SOUTHERN oscillation; CLUSTER analysis (Statistics); SPRING; K-means clustering; ATMOSPHERIC models
- Publication
Geophysical Research Letters, 2020, Vol 47, Issue 13, p1
- ISSN
0094-8276
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1029/2020GL087354