OS53A-2011
On the impact of spiciness on El Nino
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Niklas Schneider1, Emanuele Di Lorenzo2, Masami Nonaka3 and Bunmei Taguchi3, (1)University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, United States, (2)Georgia Institute of Technology Main Campus, Atlanta, GA, United States, (3)JAMSTEC Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Kanagawa, Japan
Abstract:
We investigate the modulation of ENSO location and amplitude by spiciness anomalies in the tropical thermocline. First, Argo observations constrain the size of observed spiciness anomalies. Realistic perturbations are then used to investigate the impact on an intermediate El Nino model. This shows that spiciness anomalies can increase the thermocline feedback and thus enhance the Bjerknes feedback and ENSO amplitudes. Experiments with coupled general circulation model are analyzed to investigate the impact on the character of El Nino.
