Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 40, Issue 15, Pages 4115-4120Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/grl.50677
Keywords
ENSO; stratospheric water vapor; Central Pacific El Nino; tropical tropopause layer; chemistry-climate model
Categories
Funding
- NSF [AGS-1036858, ATM-0905863]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Targeted experiments with a comprehensive chemistry-climate model are used to demonstrate that seasonality and the location of the peak warming of sea surface temperatures dictate the response of stratospheric water vapor to El Nino. In boreal spring, El Nino events in which sea surface temperature anomalies peak in the eastern Pacific lead to a warming at the tropopause above the warm pool region, and subsequently to more stratospheric water vapor (consistent with previous work). However, in fall and in early winter, and also during El Nino events in which the sea surface temperature anomaly is found mainly in the central Pacific, the response is qualitatively different: temperature changes in the warm pool region and specifically over the cold point region are nonuniform, and less water vapor enters the stratosphere. The difference in water vapor in the lower stratosphere between the two variants of El Nino approaches 0.3ppmv, while the difference between the winter and spring responses exceeds 0.5ppmv.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available