Time-varying spectral characteristics of ENSO over the Last Millennium

P Hope; BJ Henley; J Gergis; J Brown; H Ye

Journal article

Time-varying spectral characteristics of ENSO over the Last Millennium

P Hope, BJ Henley, J Gergis, J Brown, H Ye

Climate Dynamics | SPRINGER | Published : 2017

DOI: 10.1007/s00382-016-3393-z

Abstract

The characteristics of El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) spectra over the Last Millennium are examined to characterise variability over past centuries. Seven published palaeo-ENSO reconstructions and Nino3.4 from six Coupled Model Intercomparison Project-Phase 5 and Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project-Phase 3 (CMIP5–PMIP3) Last Millennium simulations were analysed. The corresponding Historical and pre-industrial Control CMIP5–PMIP3 simulations were also considered. The post-1850 spectrum of each modelled or reconstructed ENSO series captures aspects of the observed spectrum to varying degrees. We note that no single model or ENSO reconstruction completely reproduces the instrume..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Benjamin Henley Author

Joelle Gergis Author

Josephine Brown Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

The contribution of JRB and PH was supported by the Australian Climate Change Science Program. BH acknowledges funding from the Collaborative Research Network (CRN) for 'Self-sustaining Regions Research and Innovation Initiative' and ARC Linkage Project LP150100062. JG is supported by an Australian Research Council Fellowship DE130100668. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. We also thank the PAGES 2K-PMIP working group for making the ENSO reconstruction dataset readily available. We thank Sophie Lewis for discussion on model evaluation, Francois Delage for help with accessing the climate model data, Karl Braganza for his enthusiasm for exploring spectra, David Karoly for his measured suggestions, and Guomin Wang and Christine Chung for early reviews.