The “normality” of El Niño

Burgers, Gerrit; Stephenson, David B.

doi:10.1029/1999gl900161

Cited by 247 publications

(206 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…DeCarlo, 1997;Joanes and Gill, 1998). The combination of these measures allows for evaluation of the non-linearity (Burgers and Stephenson, 1999). In addition, the statistical significance of departures form 0 (skewness) and 3 (kurtosis), the intrinsic values for the normal distribution, are assessed by D'Agostino and Anscombe-Glynn tests, respectively (D'Agostino, 1970;Anscombe and Glynn, 1983).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Non-Linear Sea Level Variations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific

Niedzielski¹

2010

Artificial Satellites

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ABSTRACT. The objective of this paper is to provide an insightful interpretation for the non-linearity of the inter-annual signal in sea level change in the eastern tropical Pacific. Such a non-linearity has been already discussed elsewhere for global ocean. Herein, the residual sea level anomaly time series from TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 altimetry is obtained by removing the significant deterministic signals from the original sea level anomaly data. Since the eastern tropical Pacific is a profound region where many processes responsible for driving the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) act, it is possible to link a few of them with the non-linearity of sea level change. In particular, not only local, usually weak, oceanatmosphere interactions exist in the eastern equatorial Pacific but this region is also remotely impacted by climatic processes acting in the western equatorial Pacific where the oceanatmosphere coupling is the strongest. The detected non-linearity of sea level change is due to the asymmetry between warm and cold ENSO episodes. Such an asymmetry can be driven by the non-linear dynamical heating associated with strong ENSO events.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, Burgers and Stephenson (1999) as well as Niedzielski and Kosek (2010) utilised the notions of skewness and kurtosis to diagnose the intrinsic non-linear dynamics of sea surface temperature fluctuations and sea level variations, respectively. Not only higher-order statistics have been used to diagnose ENSO non-linearity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-Linear Sea Level Variations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific

Niedzielski¹

2010

Artificial Satellites

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“…The standard skewness and kurtosis coefficients are -0.92 and -1.92, respectively; this is within the range expected for data from a normal distribution. The fact that the NAO index may deviate significantly from normality may have important implications for NAO forecasting and can easily give the impression of non-stationary in time series (Burgers & Stephenson 1999). We analyzed the normality of the NAO Index by applying a Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test:…”

Section: Winter Nao Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of the North Atlantic Oscillation on the probability of dry and wet winters in Spain

Muñoz-Díaz¹,

Rodrigo²

2004

Clim. Res.

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In many regions of the world, agricultural and water management is usually based on probabilities of seasonal or monthly rainfall, commonly grouped into 3 categories: drought, normal rainfall, and abundant rainfall. Changes in the probabilities of the occurrence of rainfall amounts within these climatic rainfall categories will influence decision-making by farmers and water managers. This study explores the changes induced by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on the probability of winter rainfall in Spain. The evolution of the NAO was divided into 3 phases: negative NAO (NAO-), neutral NAO (NAOn), and positive NAO (NAO+), and rainfall series were divided into 3 groups corresponding to each NAO phase. Resulting empirical distribution functions allow an estimate of the changes in the probabilities of wet and dry winters due to changes in the NAO phase. Changes in the probability of the occurrence of the rainfall categories are more complex than mere increases in rainfall amount during NAO-and decreases during NAO+ phase. The spatial distribution of impacts is asymmetric, with higher probability of extremes linked to NAO-in the western area of the Iberian Peninsula. KEY WORDS: North Atlantic Oscillation · Rainfall · SpainResale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisher

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“…In our classification, El Niños (see panel a) are those for which NINO3.4> 1.5, while La Niñas (see panel b) have NINO3.4< −1. This asymmetry in the classification is due to the fact that extreme warm events are more intense but fewer in number than the extreme cold events (Hoerling et al, 1997;Burgers and Stephenson, 1999;Sardeshmukh et al, 2000;Kondrashov et al, 2005). Clearly, the extreme events, both warm and cold, tend to occur during boreal winter.…”

Section: Numerical Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A delay differential model of ENSO variability – Part 2: Phase locking, multiple solutions and dynamics of extrema

Zaliapin

Ghil

2010

Nonlin. Processes Geophys.

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Abstract. We consider a highly idealized model for El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability, as introduced in an earlier paper. The model is governed by a delay differential equation for sea-surface temperature T in the Tropical Pacific, and it combines two key mechanisms that participate in ENSO dynamics: delayed negative feedback and seasonal forcing. We perform a theoretical and numerical study of the model in the three-dimensional space of its physically relevant parameters: propagation period τ of oceanic waves across the Tropical Pacific, atmosphere-ocean coupling κ, and strength of seasonal forcing b. Phase locking of model solutions to the periodic forcing is prevalent: the local maxima and minima of the solutions tend to occur at the same position within the seasonal cycle. Such phase locking is a key feature of the observed El Niño (warm) and La Niña (cold) events. The phasing of the extrema within the seasonal cycle depends sensitively on model parameters when forcing is weak. We also study co-existence of multiple solutions for fixed model parameters and describe the basins of attraction of the stable solutions in a one-dimensional space of constant initial model histories.

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The “normality” of El Niño

Cited by 247 publications

References 15 publications

Non-Linear Sea Level Variations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific

Non-Linear Sea Level Variations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific

Impacts of the North Atlantic Oscillation on the probability of dry and wet winters in Spain

A delay differential model of ENSO variability – Part 2: Phase locking, multiple solutions and dynamics of extrema

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