Extending climate predictability beyond El Niño

This image shows inter-basin coupling as a cause of multi-year tropical Pacific climate predictability: Impact of Atlantic warming on global atmospheric Walker Circulation (arrows). Rising air over the Atlantic subsides over the equatorial Pacific, causing central Pacific sea surface cooling, which in turn reinforces the large-scale wind anomalies. Image courtesy of Yoshimitsu Chikamoto / IPRC.

Tropical Pacific climate variations and their global weather impacts may be predicted much further in advance than previously thought, according to a report by an international team of researchers from the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) and their colleagues. The source of this predictability lies in the tight interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere and among the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans. Such long-term tropical climate forecasts are useful to the public and policy makers. “We found that, even three to four years after starting the prediction, the model was still tracking the observations well,” says Yoshimitsu Chikamoto, IPRC researcher and and lead author of the study. “This implies that central Pacific climate conditions can be predicted over several years ahead.”

Read more about it in the UH System News and EurekAlert!.