ENSO Diversity

Capotondi A.; Wittenberg A.T.; Kug J.-S.; Takahashi K.; McPhaden M.J. · Geophysical Monograph Series (2020) · DOI: 10.1002/9781119548164.ch4

Resumen

ENSO events display large interevent differences in amplitude, spatial pattern, and temporal evolution. The differences in spatial pattern, which have important consequences for ENSO teleconnections and societal impacts, have become known as “ENSO diversity.” In this chapter we review key aspects of ENSO diversity, including ENSO’s surface and subsurface characteristics, underlying dynamics, predictability, lowfrequency variations, and long-term evolution, as well as the representation of ENSO diversity in climate models. To better understand the origin of ENSO diversity and identify specific characteristics of different event types, many different classification schemes have been proposed. Here we describe these different approaches and the insights they may provide on the nature of eventtoevent differences. The last two decades have seen a greater number of El Niño events with the largest sea surface temperature anomalies in the central Pacific. Current research seeks to determine whether such changes in ENSO characteristics were the result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing or just a manifes-tation of natural variability, and whether and how climate change may affect ENSO diversity in the future.