Weather noise leading to El Nino diversity in an ocean general circulation model

Abstract

The frequency of Central Pacific (CP) El Nino occurrences has increased since the late 1990s. In spite of a wealth of studies, however, the physical mechanisms that have caused the change remain unclear. We hypothesize that atmospheric weather noise plays a role in these occurrences. To test this hypothesis, we conduct four simulations using Modular Ocean Model version 4 (MOM4) forced by atmospheric weather noise. In this study, the atmospheric weather noise is defined as the random noise obtained from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts atmospheric datasets. In the first experiment, MOM4 is forced by atmospheric weather noise before 1999 along with the corresponding climatological mean state. In the second experiment, MOM4 is forced by atmospheric weather noise after 1999 along with the corresponding climatological mean state. The third and fourth experiments are similar to the first two experiments except the time periods of the climatological mean state are switched. The results show that atmospheric weather noise may play a more important role than the climatological mean state in the increase of CP El Nino occurrences. This implies that the El Nino diversity could be caused by the modulation of atmospheric weather noise. Therefore, it is important to explore how the atmospheric weather noise might change in light of global warming.