ENSO Oceanic Teleconnections

Sprintall, Janet; Cravatte, Sophie; Dewitte, Boris; Du, Yan; Sen Gupta, Alexander; McPhaden, Michael J.; Santoso, Agus; Cai, Wenju

Abstract

The reverberating impacts of ENSO are felt around the world long after the demise of ENSO events in the tropical Pacific Ocean. This is largely attributable to oceanic pathways that transfer ENSO‐associated anomalies around the Pacific and into other basins. While the impact of atmospheric teleconnections occurs over days to weeks, oceanic teleconnections permit a memory of anomalous air‐sea coupling during ENSO to persist months to years. ENSO‐generated ocean perturbations are transmitted to remote regions by planetary waves. Equatorial Kelvin waves generated by intraseasonal western Pacific wind bursts travel along the equator to the eastern basin and excite coastally trapped waves that extend ENSO's reach to high latitudes along the American coastlines. Rossby waves that either radiate from the coast with the passage of these Kelvin waves or are generated in the ocean interior by ENSO‐related wind anomalies propagate signals westward across the basin, rapidly altering tropical circulation and affecting subtropical gyres. At the leaky western boundary, the waves excited by ENSO radiate and scatter through the Indonesian seas to enter the Indian Ocean. This chapter discusses key mechanisms and highlights evidence for transport and property changes attributable to remote ENSO forcing in the tropical Pacific mediated by oceanic teleconnections.

Más información

Fecha de publicación: 2020
Página de inicio: 309
Página final: 335
URL: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119548164.ch15
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119548164.ch15