Toward a record of Central Pacific El Niño events since 1880

Pascolini-Campbell, M.; Zanchettin, Davide; Bothe, Oliver; Timmreck, Claudia; Matei, Daniela; Jungclaus, Johann H.; Graf, H.-F.

doi:10.1007/s00704-014-1114-2

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Please note that a newer version of this item is available:
https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_1523140_8

DetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Toward a record of Central Pacific El Niño events since 1880

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons37386

Zanchettin, Davide
Director’s Research Group OES, The Ocean in the Earth System, MPI for Meteorology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons49546

Bothe, Oliver
Director’s Research Group OES, The Ocean in the Earth System, MPI for Meteorology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons37356

Timmreck, Claudia
Middle and Upper Atmosphere, The Atmosphere in the Earth System, MPI for Meteorology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons37258

Matei, Daniela
Director’s Research Group OES, The Ocean in the Earth System, MPI for Meteorology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons37193

Jungclaus, Johann H.
Director’s Research Group OES, The Ocean in the Earth System, MPI for Meteorology, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Pascolini-Campbell, M., Zanchettin, D., Bothe, O., Timmreck, C., Matei, D., Jungclaus, J. H., et al. (2015). Toward a record of Central Pacific El Niño events since 1880. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 119, 379-389. doi:10.1007/s00704-014-1114-2.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0015-8249-6

Abstract

We investigate the various methods currently available for distinguishing between the Central Pacific (CP) El Niño (or “El Niño Modoki”) and the canonical El Niño by considering nine different methods and five sea surface temperature (SST) datasets from 1880 to 2010. This is aimed to demonstrate the variety which exists between different classification methods as well as to help identify years which can be more confidently classified as CP events. Classifying CP El Niños based on the greatest convergence between methods and between SST datasets provides a more robust identification of these events. Analysis of the SST patterns of the CP years identified demonstrates several misclassifications, stressing the importance of not relying solely on indices. After removal, 14 years which are classified the most consistently as CP events include the following: 1885/1886, 1914/1915, 1940/1941, 1958/1959, 1963/1964, 1968/1969, 1977/1978, 1986/1987, 1990/1991, 1991/1992, 1994/1995, 2002/2003, 2003/2004, and 2004/2005. Our findings also indicate the intermittent appearance of CP events throughout the time period investigated, inciting the role of multidecadal natural climate variability in generating CP El Niños.