Seasonal Cycle–El Niño Relationship: Validation of Hypotheses

Abstract

The present paper examines ways in which the seasonal cycle influences the evolution of El Niño in the tropical Pacific. The following hypotheses and associated physical mechanisms are investigated: (i) Hypothesis 1 (H1)?the seasonal warming of the cold tongue early in the calendar year (January?April) favors the initial growth of an event; (ii) hypothesis 2 (H2)?during an event, the warm surface waters migrating in the western basin from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere during the northern spring (April?May) trigger enhanced convection along the equator, which contributes to reinforce the event; and (iii) hypothesis 3 (H3)?the warm surface waters returning in the western basin from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere toward the end of the calendar year (November?January) favor the demise of ongoing events. Hypothesis-validation experiments are performed with a coupled atmosphere?ocean general circulation model (CGCM)?the tropical Pacific version of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) CGCM. The anomaly-coupling technique is applied, in which the simulated seasonal cycle and interannual variability can be separated and artificially modified to highlight the aspect targeted for examination, thus allowing for comparisons of simulations in which seasonal conditions in the CGCM?s atmospheric component are either fixed or time varying. The results obtained in the experiments are supportive of hypotheses H1 and H3. No supportive evidence is found for the validity of hypothesis H2.