Increasing intensity of El Niño in the central-equatorial Pacific by Tong Lee & Michael J. McPhaden, GRL 37 (2010)

Geophysical Research Letters 37 (2010) L14603;  doi: 10.1029/2010GL044007

Increasing intensity of El Niño in the central-equatorial Pacific

Tong Lee

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA

Michael J. McPhaden

Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, Seattle, Washington, USA

Satellite observations suggest that the intensity of El Niño events in the central equatorial Pacific (CP) has almost doubled in the past three decades, with the strongest warming occurring in 2009–2010. This is related to the increasing intensity as well as occurrence frequency of the so-called CP El Niño events since the 1990s. While sea surface temperature (SST) in the CP region during El Niño years has been increasing, those during neutral and La Niña years have not. Therefore, the well-documented warming trend of the warm pool in the CP region is primarily a result of more intense El Niño events rather than a general rise of background SST.

Received 15 May 2010; accepted 17 June 2010; published 24 July 2010.

Lee, T., and M. J. McPhaden (2010), Increasing intensity of El Niño in the central-equatorial Pacific, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L14603, doi:10.1029/2010GL044007.

Link:  http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL044007.shtml