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Climate science

A high bar for decadal forecasts of El Niño

Nature volume 507, pages 437–439 (2014)Cite this article

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Climate simulations suggest that multi-decadal periods of high and low variability in the phenomenon known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean may be entirely unpredictable.

The episodic warming and cooling of the surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean, known as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), causes year-to-year climate fluctuations, affecting weather, ecosystems and economies around the world. The occurrence of these episodes is not regular. For example, whereas the period covering the years 1970–2000 witnessed the strongest El Niño (warming) events on record, the years since 2000 have experienced fewer and weaker such events. Writing in the Journal of Climate, Wittenberg et al.1 make the case that these multi-decadal epochs of enhanced and subdued ENSO activity occur randomly and therefore may be unpredictable.

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Figure 1: Decadal forecasts of El Niño–Southern Oscillation activity.

References

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  1. Pedro DiNezio is in the Department of Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA.,

    Pedro DiNezio

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  1. Pedro DiNezio
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Correspondence to Pedro DiNezio.

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DiNezio, P. A high bar for decadal forecasts of El Niño. Nature 507, 437–439 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/507437a

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