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MADDEN-JULIAN OSCILLATION

Increased impacts on US West Coast

Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 603–604 (2020)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 31 July 2020

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The Madden–Julian oscillation causes teleconnections that impact mid-latitudes. Now research predicts dramatic eastward shifts of these impacts in the Pacific–North America region as the climate warms, leading to higher winter rainfall variability along the US West Coast and California in particular.

The Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO)1 is a phenomenon that causes tropical rainfall to alternate between enhanced and suppressed periods within a season, beginning as enhanced convection and precipitation in the Indian Ocean and propagating slowly eastward along the equator into the West Pacific and beyond. Its reach, however, is much broader, influencing everything from the Indian monsoon to tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific, and heatwaves, droughts and flooding in the US2. Such widespread impacts have motivated numerous studies seeking an understanding of how the MJO might change with anthropogenic warming3. As the tropical climate warms, the intensity of rainfall and winds associated with the MJO as well as their patterns may change, leading to intense debate and scrutiny of how mid-latitude weather will be affected. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Zhou and co-authors4 show that the US West Coast may experience much more MJO-associated rainfall variability by the end of the century due to the eastward shift of the dynamics controlling these mechanisms.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of MJO impacts under current and future climate.

Change history

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  1. Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Hien X. Bui

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  1. Hien X. Bui
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Correspondence to Hien X. Bui.

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Bui, H.X. Increased impacts on US West Coast. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 603–604 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0828-7

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