SA41B-2331
Tidal Variability during the Current Peak in the El-Nino Southern Oscillation
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Guiping Liu1, Thomas J Immel1, Scott England1, Jeffrey M Forbes2, Anthony J Mannucci3, Martin G Mlynczak4 and James M Russell III5, (1)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (2)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (4)NASA Langley Research Ctr, Hampton, VA, United States, (5)Hampton University, Department of Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Hampton, VA, United States
Abstract:
In 2015, a pronounced positive phase in the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is occurring, with the peak value exceeding any events that have ever occurred during the TIMED mission. ENSO modifies the global distribution of heating by water vapor and raincloud formation in the troposphere, and as such it changes the formation of atmospheric tides that drive prominent structures in the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. Here we present an analysis of the atmospheric tides using TIMED/SABER and ionospheric total electron content (TEC) GNNS GPS data throughout 2002-present. The non-migrating tides (DE3 and DE2), their relation to ENSO and their changes with the evolution of this ENSO event will be presented. We will show the impacts of ENSO seen in both the tidal signatures in atmospheric temperatures and the ionospheric response seen in TECs. A comparison to previous ENSO events that have occurred over the past decade will be presented, to provide context for the observed impact of the current El-Niño peak in 2015.
