Gabriel Lau

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAAPrinceton University

Interactions between the Responses of

North American Climate to El Nino/La Nina

and to Secular Warming Trend in the

Indian-Western Pacific Oceans

CORRELATION: SST(FMA) vs NINO INDEX(NDJ)MODEL

OBSERVATION

(Alexander et al. 2002, J.Clim., Fig.2)

(Alexander et al. 2002, J.Clim., Fig.3)

200 mb ZJJA(1)

IWP-CLIMO

200 mb Z

Correlation with Great Plains Precipitation

Schubert et al. 2004

CORRELATION: 200 mb [Z] vs NINO3.4 in Jan(1)

SST

SST Sensitivity RunsSST Sensitivity Runs

Name of Name of

ExperimentExperiment SST ForcingSST Forcing

• EN El Niño

• LN La Niña

• T(IWP) 50-yr Trend in Indo-Western Pacific

• T(IWP)+EN Sum of IWP Trend and El Niño

• T(IWP)+LN Sum of IWP Trend and La Niña

• C Climatological

C20C A1B

C20C A1B

The Atmospheric Bridge

Total of 16 realizations

1950 1999

GFDL R30 14-Layer GCM

Prescribed SST in Deep Tropical Central / Eastern

Pacific

Two-way couplingwith a variable-depth

ocean mixed-layer elsewhere

SSTAnomaly

Prescribed

SST Predicted byMixed Layer

Model

Experiment Design

SST ClimatologyPrescribed