El Niño And The East Asian Monsoon: Unraveling The Roles Of The Annual Cycle And Air/Sea Interactions

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the largest source of seasonal climate predictability in the tropics and the subtropical monsoon systems. In previous work we demonstrated that nonlinear interactions between ENSO and the warm pool annual cycle generate rich spatial and temporal diversity and complexity of climate variability in the aforementioned regions, well beyond of what have been known as the canonical ENSO impact patterns.

In this talk we present a unifying concept that captures ENSO’s nonlinear impacts throughout the march of the seasons, as well as the role of air/sea interactions in this interplay between ENSO and the East Asian monsoon system. Furthermore, we will use the recent extreme 2015/2016 El Niño event to highlight the climate impacts over East Asia associated with our conceptual framework.