Indian Ocean Dipole leads to Atlantic Niño.
other · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34642331.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-26223-w and PMC identifier 8511204.
- 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
Atlantic Niño is the Atlantic equivalent of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and it has prominent impacts on regional and global climate. Existing studies suggest that the Atlantic Niño may arise from local atmosphere-ocean interaction and is sometimes triggered by the Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM), with overall weak ENSO contribution. By analyzing observational datasets and performing numerical model experiments, here we show that the Atlantic Niño can be induced by the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). We find that the enhanced rainfall in the western tropical Indian Ocean during positive IOD weakens the easterly trade winds over the tropical Atlantic, causing warm anomalies in the central and eastern equatorial Atlantic basin and therefore triggering the Atlantic Niño. Our finding suggests that the cross-basin impact from the tropical Indian Ocean plays a more important role in affecting interannual climate variability than previously thought.