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Toward a record of Central Pacific El Niño events since 1880

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Abstract

We investigate the various methods currently available for distinguishing between the Central Pacific (CP) El Niño (or “El Niño Modoki”) and the canonical El Niño by considering nine different methods and five sea surface temperature (SST) datasets from 1880 to 2010. This is aimed to demonstrate the variety which exists between different classification methods as well as to help identify years which can be more confidently classified as CP events. Classifying CP El Niños based on the greatest convergence between methods and between SST datasets provides a more robust identification of these events. Analysis of the SST patterns of the CP years identified demonstrates several misclassifications, stressing the importance of not relying solely on indices. After removal, 14 years which are classified the most consistently as CP events include the following: 1885/1886, 1914/1915, 1940/1941, 1958/1959, 1963/1964, 1968/1969, 1977/1978, 1986/1987, 1990/1991, 1991/1992, 1994/1995, 2002/2003, 2003/2004, and 2004/2005. Our findings also indicate the intermittent appearance of CP events throughout the time period investigated, inciting the role of multidecadal natural climate variability in generating CP El Niños.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Aiko Voigt and an anonymous reviewer for their useful comments on the manuscript. The study also benefitted from critical comments from two anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this work. MP-C would like to thank the guest program of the International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modeling (IMPRS-ESM) which made this research possible. DZ and CT acknowledge funding from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research in Germany (BMBF) through the research program “MiKlip” [FKZ: 01LP1158A (DZ)/01LP1130A (CT)]. OB acknowledges funding through the Cluster of Excellence “CliSAP,” University of Hamburg, funded through the German Science Foundation (DFG). The authors are grateful to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Earth System Research Laboratory/Physical Sciences Division for providing their data products at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/ and the Met Office Hadley Center for providing HadISST data at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    M. Pascolini-Campbell

  2. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany

    M. Pascolini-Campbell, D. Zanchettin, C. Timmreck, D. Matei & J. H. Jungclaus

  3. Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, at the University of Rostock, Kühlungsborn, Germany

    O. Bothe

  4. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    H.-F. Graf

Authors
  1. M. Pascolini-Campbell
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  2. D. Zanchettin
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  3. O. Bothe
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  4. C. Timmreck
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  5. D. Matei
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  6. J. H. Jungclaus
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  7. H.-F. Graf
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Correspondence to M. Pascolini-Campbell.

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Pascolini-Campbell, M., Zanchettin, D., Bothe, O. et al. Toward a record of Central Pacific El Niño events since 1880. Theor Appl Climatol 119, 379–389 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1114-2

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