Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster of Ministry of Education (KLME), Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China.
Department of Oceanography & International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Nat Commun. 2021 May 25;12(1):3096. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23411-6.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the primary driver of year-to-year global climate variability, is known to influence the North Tropical Atlantic (NTA) sea surface temperature (SST), especially during boreal spring season. Focusing on statistical lead-lag relationships, previous studies have proposed that interannual NTA SST variability can also feed back on ENSO in a predictable manner. However, these studies did not properly account for ENSO's autocorrelation and the fact that the SST in the Atlantic and Pacific, as well as their interaction are seasonally modulated. This can lead to misinterpretations of causality and the spurious identification of Atlantic precursors for ENSO. Revisiting this issue under consideration of seasonality, time-varying ENSO frequency, and greenhouse warming, we demonstrate that the cross-correlation characteristics between NTA SST and ENSO, are consistent with a one-way Pacific to Atlantic forcing, even though the interpretation of lead-lag relationships may suggest otherwise.
厄尔尼诺-南方涛动（ENSO）是全球气候年际变化的主要驱动因素，已知其会影响北大西洋热带地区（NTA）的海面温度（SST），特别是在北方春季季节。先前的研究侧重于统计的超前滞后关系，提出年际 NTA SST 变化也可以以可预测的方式对 ENSO 产生反馈。然而，这些研究没有正确考虑到 ENSO 的自相关性，以及大西洋和太平洋的 SST 及其相互作用是季节性调节的事实。这可能导致因果关系的误解和对 ENSO 的大西洋前兆的错误识别。在考虑季节性、时变 ENSO 频率和温室增暖的情况下重新研究这个问题，我们表明，即使滞后关系的解释可能表明相反，NTA SST 和 ENSO 之间的互相关特征仍与从太平洋到大西洋的单向强迫一致。
