Nonlinear response of tropical lower-stratospheric temperature and water vapor to ENSO

Garfinkel, Chaim I.; Gordon, Amit; Oman, Luke D.; Li, Feng; Davis, Sean; Pawson, Steven

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-4597-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-4597-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-4597-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

Research article

|

05 Apr 2018

Research article |

| 05 Apr 2018

Nonlinear response of tropical lower-stratospheric temperature and water vapor to ENSO

Chaim I. Garfinkel, Amit Gordon, Luke D. Oman, Feng Li, Sean Davis, and Steven Pawson

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-4597-2018-supplement

Data sets

Monthly Nino indices based on ERSSTv5 data NCEP CPC http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/ersst5.nino.mth.81-10.ascii

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Short summary

The impact of El Niño in the lower stratosphere is nonlinear in spring. While moderate El Niño events lead to cooling in this region, strong El Niño events appear to lead to warming, and hence the water vapor response is nonlinear too. The net effect is that strong El Nino events, such as in 1997/1998 and 2015/2016, lead to qualitatively different water vapor impacts as compared to moderate El Nino events.