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A weak El Niño/Southern Oscillation with delayed seasonal growth around 4,300 years ago

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 949–953 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Earth’s interannual climate variability is dominated by El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Palaeoclimate records indicate a lower ENSO variance during the middle Holocene compared with today1,2,3,4,5,6; however, model simulations have not reproduced the full magnitude of the changes7,8,9,10, and whether external forcing drives large intrinsic ENSO variability11 is therefore a matter of considerable debate. Here we present a 175-year-long, monthly resolved oxygen isotope record, obtained from a Porites coral microatoll located on Kiritimati (Christmas) Island, in the NINO3.4 region of the central equatorial Pacific. Our quantitative record of ENSO variability about 4,300 years ago shows that ENSO variance was persistently reduced by 79%, compared with today, and it exhibits a dominant annual cycle. Season-specific analysis shows that El Niño events were damped during their September–November growth phase, and delayed relative to the climatological year. We suggest that the higher boreal summer insolation at the time strengthened the tropical Pacific zonal winds as well as the gradients in sea surface temperature, and thereby led to an enhanced annual cycle and suppressed ENSO. As the weak ENSO is subject to interdecadal amplitude modulation, we conclude that amplitude modulation is likely to remain robust under altered climates. Our findings show that ENSO is capable of responding to external forcing.

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Figure 1: Comparison of Kiritimati coral δ18O and instrumental SST.
Figure 2: The interannual and seasonal evolution of ENSO.
Figure 3: Annual cycle of the Kiritimati SST, modern coral δ18O and ∼ 4.3 kyr BP coral δ18O records.
Figure 4: Interdecadal modulation of ENSO amplitude.

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  • 06 September 2013

    In the version of this Letter originally published online, the published online date should have read '5 September 2013'. This has been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Letter.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Bryden, T. Schambron and A. T. Berenti for support with fieldwork carried out under Permit from the Environment and Conservation Division, Ministry of Environment, Lands and Agriculture Development of the Republic of Kiribati. D. Zeko, J. Gaudry, A. Harbeck and S. Maher assisted with sample preparation. J. Abrantes is thanked for XRD analyses and thin-section preparation. J. Cowley, H. Scott-Gagan, J. Cali, A. McGregor, W. Lees and S. Sosdian assisted with oxygen isotope analysis. M. Dore, L. Glasbergen and H. Schofield assisted with Sr/Ca analysis. A. Wittenberg, J. Smerdon and R. Seager assisted with GFDL CM2.1 model output. M. Evans, N. J. Abram and T. J. Williams are thanked for thoughtful comments on the manuscript. We acknowledge the support of J-x. Zhao and funding from Australian Research Council (ARC) LIEF grant LE0989067 for MC-ICPMS U–Th dating. This work was supported by ARC Discovery Projects grants DP0664313 (C.D.W.), DP1092945 (H.V.M.) and DP063227 (M.K.G.), AINSE Awards AINGRA10077 (H.V.M.) and AINGRA09021 (H.V.M.), ANSTO ‘Cosmogenic climate Archives of the Southern Hemisphere’ and ‘Isotopes in Climate Change and Atmospheric Systems’ projects, and the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (S.J.P.). H.V.M. is supported by an AINSE Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia

    H. V. McGregor & C. D. Woodroffe

  2. Institute for Environmental Research, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Locked Bag 2001, Kirrawee DC, New South Wales 2232, Australia

    M. J. Fischer, D. Fink & H. Wong

  3. Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia

    M. K. Gagan

  4. Climate Change Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia

    S. J. Phipps

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  1. H. V. McGregor
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Contributions

H.V.M, C.D.W. and D.F. conducted fieldwork, sampled fossil coral XM35 and designed the study. H.V.M. oversaw all analytical aspects of the study, with contributions to δ18O analysis from M.K.G., age dating from C.D.W. and D.F., and Sr/Ca analysis from H.W. S.J.P. provided climate model output and analysis and assisted with the coral age model. M.J.F. and H.V.M. conducted the statistical analysis. H.V.M. and M.K.G. wrote the manuscript with assistance from M.J.F. All authors discussed the results, interpretations and contributed to the final version of manuscript.

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Correspondence to H. V. McGregor.

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McGregor, H., Fischer, M., Gagan, M. et al. A weak El Niño/Southern Oscillation with delayed seasonal growth around 4,300 years ago. Nature Geosci 6, 949–953 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1936

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