Climate impacts of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation on South America

Cai, Wenju; McPhaden, Michael J.; Grimm, Alice M.; Rodrigues, Regina R.; Taschetto, Andréa S.; Garreaud, René; Dewitte, Boris; Poveda, Germán; Ham, Yoo‐Geun; Santoso, Agus; Ng, Benjamin; Anderson, Weston; Wang, Guojian; Geng, Tao; Jo, HyunBin; Marengo, José A.; Alves, Lincoln M.; Osman, Marisol; Li, Shujun; Wu, Lixin; Karamperidou, C.; Takahashi, K.; Vera, Carolina

doi:10.1038/s43017-020-0040-3

Cited by 388 publications

(372 citation statements)

References 165 publications

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“…Several studies have highlighted the importance of considering the diversity of the ENSO events, with the location and intensity of the SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific found to cause significant differences in rainfall anomalies over South America (Hill et al, 2009;Sulca et al, 2018;Cai et al, 2020). This is a consequence of modifications to the Walker Circulation owing to whether the centre of warming or cooling of the SST anomalies was located in the central or eastern Pacific Ocean (Cai et al, 2020). For instance, Sulca et al (2018) identified that a warm eastern Pacific ENSO index results in significant dry anomalies over the Peruvian Amazon, along the Peru-Brazil boundary.…”

Section: The Amazon Basinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, though strong correlations do exist between the ENSO and hydrometeorological variables, no two ENSO events are exactly alike (e.g. different temporal evolutions, spatial and magnitude differences of the SST anomalies), with asymmetrical differences found between the cold and warm phases (Cai et al, 2020). This is highlighted by several authors (Hill et al, 2009(Hill et al, , 2011Rodrigues and McPhaden, 2014) who have identified different or even opposing rainfall anomalies in different regions of the world depending on whether the centre of cooling or warming in the equatorial Pacific Ocean was central or eastern specific.…”

Section: Uncertainties and Lack Of Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Attribution of Amazon floods to modes of climate variability: A review

Towner

Cloke

Lavado

et al. 2020

Meteorological Applications

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Anomalous conditions in the oceans and atmosphere have the potential to be used to enhance the predictability of flood events, enabling earlier warnings to reduce risk. In the Amazon basin, extreme flooding is consistently attributed to warmer or cooler conditions in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans, with some evidence linking floods to other hydroclimatic drivers such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). This review evaluates the impact of several hydroclimatic drivers on rainfall and river discharge regimes independently, aggregating all the information of previous studies to provide an up-to-date depiction of what we currently know and do not know about how variations in climate impact flooding in the Amazon. Additionally, 34 major flood events that have occurred since 1950 in the Amazon and their attribution to climate anomalies are documented and evaluated. This review finds that despite common agreement within the literature describing the relationship between phases of climate indices and hydrometeorological variables, results linking climate anomalies and flood hazard are often limited to correlation rather than to causation, while the understanding of their usefulness for flood forecasting is weak. There is a need to understand better the ocean-atmosphere response mechanisms that led to previous flood events. In particular, examining the oceanic and atmospheric conditions preceding individual hydrological extremes, as opposed to composite analysis, could provide insightful information into the magnitude and spatial distribution of anomalous sea surface temperatures required to produce extreme floods. Importantly, such an analysis could provide meaningful thresholds on which to base seasonal flood forecasts.

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Section: The Amazon Basinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Uncertainties and Lack Of Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Attribution of Amazon floods to modes of climate variability: A review

Towner

Cloke

Lavado

et al. 2020

Meteorological Applications

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“…Precipitation over South America, and Brazil in particular, is significantly impacted by the most important interannual climate oscillation, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (Grimm, 2003(Grimm, , 2004(Grimm, , 2011Tedeschi et al, 2015Tedeschi et al, , 2016Cai et al, 2020). In addition, it also displays interdecadal variability produced by the main global and regional climate oscillations in this time scale, especially the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) (Grimm & Saboia, 2015;Grimm et al, 2016).…”

Section: The Importance Of Climate Oscillationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is the main climate oscillation on interannual time scales, with global climate impacts, including significant effects on South America. They can be produced directly, as on the west coast of the continent, which experiences the local effects of the perturbed SST, as well as indirectly, through atmospheric teleconnections from the Pacific, which disturb the atmospheric circulation over the continent, changing precipitation and temperature (Cai et al, 2020, and references therein).…”

Section: /12mentioning

confidence: 99%

The combined effect of climate oscillations in producing extremes: the 2020 drought in southern Brazil

Grimm

Almeida

Beneti

et al. 2020

RBRH

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The 2020 drought in southern Brazil, which culminated in late summer and early autumn (February-March-April), displayed one of the most deficient rainfall totals in such trimester. This period of the year has already been dominated by negative rainfall deviations since the end of the 1990s. This recent drought represents, therefore, a significant worsening in an already unfavorable situation of water availability. Such long-term behavior is due to the combination of opposite phases of two interdecadal oscillations in the sea surface temperature: the positive phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the negative phase of the Pacific Interdecadal Oscillation. This combination produces variation in the atmospheric basic state that favors less rainfall in southern Brazil at this time of the year and more frequent occurrence of droughts. For an extreme event to occur, it is usually necessary that, in addition to interdecadal oscillations, an interannual oscillation event occurs that also favors drought, such as the events of Central El Niño in 2020 and La Niña in 2009 and 2012, years of droughts in southern Brazil during the same phase combination of the two interdecadal oscillations. Anthropic climate changes can intensify the frequency and intensity of these extreme events.

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“…Thus, a deeper understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of river basins is required. This analysis could include the coupling between water and energy budgets, considering that water cycle in Amazonia is sensitive to perturbations caused by human-related activities 19 and it is also driven by diverse natural climate variability phenomena, including the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) [20][21][22][23][24][25][26] and changes in sea surface temperatures in the Tropical North Atlantic, among others. [27][28][29] The theoretical framework introduced by Budyko provides a functional relationship to understand the coupling between water and energy budgets in river basins.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainty of runoff sensitivity to climate change in the Amazon River basin

Carmona

Renner

Kleidon

et al. 2020

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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We employ the approach of Roderick and Farquhar (2011) to assess the sensitivity of runoff (R) given changes in precipitation (P), potential evapotranspiration (E p), and other properties that change the partitioning of P (n) by estimating coefficients that predict the weight of each variable in the relative change of R. We use this framework using different data sources and products for P, actual evapotranspiration (E), and E p within the Amazon River basin to quantify the uncertainty of the hydrologic response at the subcatchment scale. We show that when estimating results from the different combinations of datasets for the entire river basin (at Óbidos), a 10% increase in P would increase R on average 16%, while a 10% increase in E p would decrease R about 6%. In addition, a 10% change in the parameter n would affect the hydrological response of the entire basin around 5%. However, results change from catchment to catchment and are dependent on the combination of datasets. Finally, results suggest that enhanced estimates of E and E p are needed to improve our understanding of the future scenarios of hydrological sensitivity with implications for the quantification of climate change impacts at the regional (subcatchment and subbasin) scale in Amazonia.

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Climate impacts of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation on South America

Cited by 388 publications

References 165 publications

Attribution of Amazon floods to modes of climate variability: A review

Attribution of Amazon floods to modes of climate variability: A review

The combined effect of climate oscillations in producing extremes: the 2020 drought in southern Brazil

Uncertainty of runoff sensitivity to climate change in the Amazon River basin

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