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Journal Article

ENSO change in climate projections: forced response or internal variability?

MPS-Authors
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Maher,  Nicola       
Director’s Research Group OES, The Ocean in the Earth System, MPI for Meteorology, Max Planck Society;

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

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Milinski,  Sebastian
Director’s Research Group OES, The Ocean in the Earth System, MPI for Meteorology, Max Planck Society;
IMPRS on Earth System Modelling, MPI for Meteorology, Max Planck Society;

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

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Citation

Maher, N., Matei, D., Milinski, S., & Marotzke, J. (2018). ENSO change in climate projections: forced response or internal variability? Geophysical Research Letters, 45, 11390-11398. doi:10.1029/2018GL079764.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0002-74DF-1
Abstract
Two large ensembles are used to quantify the extent to which internal variability can contribute to long-term changes in El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) characteristics. We diagnose changes that are externally forced and distinguish between multi-model simulation results that differ by chance and those that differ due to different model physics. The range of simulated ENSO amplitude changes in the large ensemble historical simulations encompasses 90% of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 historical simulations and 80% of moderate (RCP4.5) and strong (RCP8.5) warming scenarios. When considering projected ENSO pattern changes, model differences are also important. We find that ENSO has high internal variability and that single realizations of a model can produce very different results to the ensemble mean response. Due to this variability, 30–40 ensemble members of a single model are needed to robustly compute absolute ENSO variance to a 10% error when 30-year analysis periods are used. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.