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The role of El Niño in the global energy redistribution: a case study in the mid-Holocene

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Abstract

It has been shown that El Niño events contribute to discharge the warm pool excess of energy out of the tropical Pacific. In a different climate, the energetic budget in the tropical Pacific is altered, which might have an effect on the El Niño amplitude and/or occurrence and thereby on the role of El Niño on energy redistribution. The mid-Holocene period (6 ka BP) offers a good example of changes in the distribution of incoming solar energy. In particular, the equator-pole gradient was weaker compared to the modern period. We analyze long stable simulations of the mid-Holocene and the pre-industrial era and discuss the mean- and El Niño-related energy transports in the two climates. We show that the role of global energy pump played by the tropical Pacific is reduced in the mid-Holocene in our simulation, both in long-term mean and during El Niño years. We demonstrate that this is not only a direct response to insolation forcing but this is further amplified by changes in internal processes. We analyze the relative role of El Niño events in the Pacific discharge in the two climates and show that it is reduced in the mid-Holocene, i.e. the fraction of the Pacific discharge that is due to El Niño is reduced. This is mainly due to reduction in the occurrence of El Niño events. This work gives a new approach to address El Niño changes, from the perspective of the role of El Niño in global energy redistribution.

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Notes

  1. Niño3 = 150°W–90°W, 5°N–5°S; Niño3.4 = 170°W–120°W, 5°N–5°S.

  2. It is worth specifying that the results obtained for the MH long-term mean changes in Sect. 4.1 are similar when considering the mean over the entire simulation or over “neutral” years only, i.e. neither selected as El Niño nor as La Niña with the inverse threshold (not shown).

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the French ANR Project ELPASO (No. 2010 BLANC 608 01), and by the Knowledge and Innovation Community Climate-KIC from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the PMIP3 modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. This study benefited from the IPSL Prodiguer-Ciclad facility which is supported by CNRS, UPMC, Labex L-IPSL which is funded by the ANR (Grant #ANR-10-LABX-0018) and by the European FP7 IS-ENES2 project (Grant #312979). The computing time was provided by GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif) and the simulations performed on Curie at TGCC (CEA,France). We acknowledge the three anonymous reviewers for their relevant comments, which led to improve the manuscript.

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  1. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL,CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Marion Saint-Lu, Pascale Braconnot & Olivier Marti

  2. UPMC Univ. Paris 06, Laboratoire d’Océanographie et Climatologie, LOCEAN/IPSL, CNRS-IRD-MNHN, Sorbonne Universités, 4, place Jussieu, 75005, Paris, France

    Julie Leloup

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  1. Marion Saint-Lu
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  2. Pascale Braconnot
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  4. Olivier Marti
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Correspondence to Marion Saint-Lu.

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This paper is a contribution to the special collection on ENSO Diversity. The special collection aims at improving understanding of the origin, evolution, and impacts of ENSO events that differ in amplitude and spatial patterns, in both observational and modeling contexts, and in the current as well as future climate scenarios. This special collection is coordinated by Antonietta Capotondi, Eric Guilyardi, Ben Kirtman and Sang-Wook Yeh.

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Saint-Lu, M., Braconnot, P., Leloup, J. et al. The role of El Niño in the global energy redistribution: a case study in the mid-Holocene. Clim Dyn 52, 7135–7152 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3266-5

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