Spurious North Tropical Atlantic precursors to El Niño.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34035285.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-23411-6 and PMC identifier 8149707.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the primary driver of year-to-year global climate variability, is known to influence the North Tropical Atlantic (NTA) sea surface temperature (SST), especially during boreal spring season. Focusing on statistical lead-lag relationships, previous studies have proposed that interannual NTA SST variability can also feed back on ENSO in a predictable manner. However, these studies did not properly account for ENSO's autocorrelation and the fact that the SST in the Atlantic and Pacific, as well as their interaction are seasonally modulated. This can lead to misinterpretations of causality and the spurious identification of Atlantic precursors for ENSO. Revisiting this issue under consideration of seasonality, time-varying ENSO frequency, and greenhouse warming, we demonstrate that the cross-correlation characteristics between NTA SST and ENSO, are consistent with a one-way Pacific to Atlantic forcing, even though the interpretation of lead-lag relationships may suggest otherwise.