Abstract
The Southern Oscillation is the dominant pattern of interannual climatic variation over the Earth. Climatic variance associated with this phenomenon is exceeded only by the annual cycle and the ice ages. Although there is general agreement among climatologists that the Southern Oscillation originates in the interaction between the atmosphere and the tropical ocean, the detailed mechanism(s) have remained elusive. In this report we present evidence that the essential aspects of the Southern Oscillation are simulated in a general circulation model (GCM) of the coupled atmosphere and upper ocean. This indicates that: (1) the physical basis of this global oscillation is present in the equations of motion underlying this model; (2) multi-year simulations of climate by GCMs, which have hitherto primarily been used to study equilibrium properties of climate, may also be useful in investigating time-dependent changes on the interannual timescale.
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Sperber, K., Hameed, S., Gates, W. et al. Southern oscillation simulated in a global climate model. Nature 329, 140–142 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/329140a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/329140a0
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