Cobb Kim M, Charles Christopher D, Cheng Hai, Edwards R Lawrence
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
Nature. 2003 Jul 17;424(6946):271-6. doi: 10.1038/nature01779.
Any assessment of future climate change requires knowledge of the full range of natural variability in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. Here we splice together fossil-coral oxygen isotopic records from Palmyra Island in the tropical Pacific Ocean to provide 30-150-year windows of tropical Pacific climate variability within the last 1,100 years. The records indicate mean climate conditions in the central tropical Pacific ranging from relatively cool and dry during the tenth century to increasingly warmer and wetter climate in the twentieth century. But the corals also document a broad range of ENSO behaviour that correlates poorly with these estimates of mean climate. The most intense ENSO activity within the reconstruction occurred during the mid-seventeenth century. Taken together, the coral data imply that the majority of ENSO variability over the last millennium may have arisen from dynamics internal to the ENSO system itself.
任何对未来气候变化的评估都需要了解厄尔尼诺/南方涛动（ENSO）现象中自然变率的全貌。在此，我们拼接了来自热带太平洋帕尔米拉岛的化石珊瑚氧同位素记录，以提供过去1100年里热带太平洋气候变化的30 - 150年时间窗。这些记录显示，热带太平洋中部的平均气候条件从10世纪相对凉爽干燥到20世纪气候日益变暖和湿润。但珊瑚也记录了广泛的ENSO行为，这些行为与这些平均气候估计值的相关性较差。重建过程中最强烈的ENSO活动发生在17世纪中叶。综合来看，珊瑚数据表明，过去一千年里ENSO变率的大部分可能源于ENSO系统本身内部的动力学。
