The Role of Atmospheric Transport for El Niño-Southern Oscillation Teleconnections

Author(s)
Katharina Baier, Marina Dütsch, Michael Mayer, Lucie Bakels, Leopold Haimberger, Andreas Stohl
Abstract

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is one of Earth's main modes of climate variability, having huge impacts on weather, agriculture, and people worldwide. Although these impacts and teleconnections have been studied for decades, the role of atmospheric transport is not completely understood. We analyze the atmospheric transport outgoing from the Equatorial Pacific with the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART driven by reanalysis data. Our results demonstrate the interocean-basin exchange via the atmosphere: anomalously energetic air from the ENSO region mainly remains within the Tropics and Subtropics, while more air is transported toward the east during El Niño. Transport of anomalous moist air can directly be linked to several observed teleconnections, for example, droughts in the Amazon Basin and precipitation in Southeastern U.S. during El Niño. These results show that atmospheric transport plays a role in several ENSO teleconnections.

Organisation(s)
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
External organisation(s)
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Volume
49
ISSN
0094-8276
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL100906
Publication date
12-2022
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
105206 Meteorology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Geophysics, Earth and Planetary Sciences(all)
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/the-role-of-atmospheric-transport-for-el-ninosouthern-oscillation-teleconnections(7b5e3846-79a7-4bce-8d39-cb7ac7823f1c).html