An introduction to the dynamics of El Nino & the southern oscillation / by Allan J. Clarke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clarke, Allan J.

Contributor:

Louis A. Duhring Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Southern oscillation.

Dynamic meteorology.

El Niño Current.

Physical Description:

308 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

London New York : Academic, 2008.

Summary:

Many scientists either working on the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) problem or its many applications have not been trained in both the equatorial ocean and atmospheric dynamics necessary to understand it. This book seeks to overcome this difficulty by providing a step by step introduction to ENSO, helping the upper level graduate student or research scientist to learn quickly the ENSO basics and be up to date with the latest ENSO research. The text assumes that the reader has a knowledge of the equations of fluid mechanics on a rotating earth and emphasizes the observations and simple physical explanations of them.

Following a history of ENSO and a discussion of ENSO observations in Chapters 1 and 2, Chapters 3-5 consider relevant equatorial ocean dynamics, Chapters 6 and 9 relevant atmospheric dynamics, and Chapters 7 and 8 the main paradigms for how the Pacific Ocean and atmosphere couple together to produce ENSO. Chapter 8 also discusses the old mystery of why ENSO tends to be locked in phase with the seasonal cycle. Successful dynamical and statistical approaches to ENSO prediction are discussed in Chapters 10 and 11 while Chapter 12 concludes the book with examples of how ENSO influences marine and bird life.

Contents:

2 ENSO in the Tropical Pacific 11

2.2 Spatial Patterns of ENSO in the Tropical Pacific 11

2.2.1 The western equatorial Pacific region 150[degree]-150[degree]W where ocean-atmosphere coupling is strongest 14

2.2.2 ENSO effects in the eastern Pacific 17

2.2.3 ENSO effects in the far western Pacific (120[degree]E-140[degree]E) 20

2.2.4 ENSO effects in the upper atmosphere 20

2.3 Time Series Structure of the ENSO Variables 24

2.4 A Physical Explanation for El Nino 28

3 Equatorial Ocean Waves 33

3.2 The Linear Stratified Ocean Model 34

3.3 The Description of the Constant Depth Ocean Dynamics in Terms of Vertical Modes 37

3.3.1 The continuously stratified case 37

3.3.2 The two-layer stratification case 39

3.4 Equatorial Waves 46

3.4.1 The equatorial Kelvin wave 46

3.4.2 Other equatorial waves 48

3.4.3 Low-frequency equatorial waves 54

3.4.4 Energy flux and group velocity 55

4 Equatorial Wave Reflection from Pacific Ocean Boundaries 57

4.2 Wave Reflection at the Western Pacific Boundary 58

4.2.1 Reflection from a solid meridional western boundary 58

4.2.2 Low-frequency reflection from a solid non-meridional western boundary 59

4.2.3 ENSO frequency reflection from the gappy western Pacific boundary 61

4.2.4 Interannual surface flow between the Pacific and Indian Oceans 65

4.3 Wave Reflection at the Eastern Pacific Ocean Boundary 67

4.3.1 Moore's solution for the reflection of an equatorial Kelvin wave from a meridional eastern ocean boundary 68

4.3.2 The coastal Kelvin wave 70

4.3.3 Solution for [beta]-plane motions near the eastern boundary 72

4.3.4 Limiting forms of the near-boundary low-frequency solution 76

4.3.5 Eastern ocean near-boundary physics 78

4.3.6 Linking the coastal and equatorial low-frequency variability 78

4.3.7 Low-frequency reflection from non-meridional eastern ocean boundaries 80

4.3.8 Reflection of ENSO energy at the eastern Pacific Ocean boundary 83

5 Wind-Forced Equatorial Wave Theory and the Equatorial Ocean Response to ENSO Wind Forcing 89

5.2 The Forced Wave Model 90

5.3 Solutions for General Low-Frequency Large-Scale Wind Forcing 95

5.4 Solutions for Idealized Forcing 97

5.4.1 Unbounded ocean, spatially constant wind - the Yoshida equatorial jet 97

5.4.2 The steady ocean response when the wind stress has no curl 98

5.5 Observed Low-Frequency Behavior of the Equatorial Pacific Sea Level and Thermocline 101

5.6 ENSO Equatorial Ocean Response due to the Wind Stress Curl 105

5.7 El Nino and Equatorial Kelvin Waves 109

6 Sea Surface Temperature, Deep Atmospheric Convection and ENSO Surface Winds 113

6.2 Some Preliminaries 114

6.3 Equation of State 115

6.3.1 'Ideal' gas 115

6.3.2 Dry air 115

6.3.3 Moist air 116

6.4 The First Law of Thermodynamics and Moist Static Energy 117

6.5 Sea Surface Temperature and Deep Atmospheric Convection 120

6.6 Heating and Vertical Velocity 123

6.7 Geopotential, Pressure Coordinates and the Continuity Equation 125

6.7.1 Geopotential and geopotential height 125

6.7.2 Horizontal gradients of [Phi] 127

6.7.3 The continuity equation in pressure coordinates 128

6.8 A Model of the Near-Surface Tropical Atmosphere's Response to Large-Scale Convective Heating 129

6.8.1 Model formulation 130

6.8.2 Forced, damped equatorial long wave theory 133

6.8.3 ENSO wind anomalies and forced wave physics 135

7 ENSO Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Models 139

7.2 Delayed Oscillator Theory 141

7.2.2 Formulation of a warm pool displacement/delayed oscillator model of ENSO 142

7.2.3 Model solutions 144

7.2.4 The influence of other negative feedbacks 147

7.2.5 Non-constant [Delta] 148

7.3 Discharge-Recharge Oscillator Theory 149

7.3.2 The atmosphere drives the ocean 149

7.3.3 Ocean dynamics and thermodynamics drive T[subscript cen] and the atmosphere 150

7.3.4 Mathematical solution and coupled physics 151

7.4 Intermediate Coupled Models 153

8 Phase-Locking of ENSO to the Calendar Year 159

8.2 The Composite Warm ENSO Event 160

8.3 Phase-Locked ENSO Index Time Series 169

8.4 Phase-Locked Propagating Zonal Equatorial Wind Anomalies 173

8.5 Linking the Pacific Equatorial Wind Stress Anomalies with the SOI and NINO3.4 178

8.5.1 The relationship between the Southern Oscillation and zonal equatorial wind stress anomalies 179

8.5.2 The relationship between El Nino and the zonal equatorial wind stress 180

8.5.3 Phase-locked structure of NINO3.4 and the SOI 181

8.6 Phase-Locking and Biennial Variability 181

8.7 A Phase-Locking Mechanism for the Termination of ENSO Events 182

8.7.1 Basic mechanism 183

8.7.2 Large El Ninos 184

8.8 Elements of a Seasonally Phase-Locked ENSO Mechanism 185

9 Upper Air Response to ENSO Heating and Atmospheric Teleconnections 189

9.2 Observations 190

9.3 Nearly Zonally Asymmetric ENSO Heating Anomalies 195

9.4 An Atmospheric ENSO Model 196

9.4.1 Logarithmic pressure coordinates 197

9.4.2 Equations of motion in logarithmic pressure coordinates 197

9.4.3 Model equations 199

9.4.4 Separation of the governing equations into vertical modes 201

9.4.5 Dominance of the first vertical mode 204

9.5 The Large Zonally Symmetric Air Temperature Response 206

9.6 Mid-latitude Zonally Symmetric Cooling During Warm ENSO Events 208

9.7 Zonally Asymmetric Mid-latitude Teleconnections 210

9.7.2 Stationary Rossby wave theory 211

10 ENSO Forecasting Using Dynamical Models 217

10.2 Smoothing, Bias Correction and Nudging 219

10.2.1 Smoothing 219

10.2.2 Bias correction 219

10.2.3 Nudging 221

10.3 The Kalman Filter 222

10.4 Adjoint Data Assimilation 225

10.5 Dynamical Model Forecast Performance 227

Appendix 10.A Minimization of (10.15) 229

Appendix 10.B Connecting P[subscript a] and P[subscript f] 230

11 ENSO Forecasting Using Statistical Models 233

11.2 The Climatology and Persistence Forecasting Scheme 234

11.3 A Precursor ENSO Prediction Model 236

11.4 Prediction Using Canonical Correlation Analysis 238

11.4.1 The Basic Idea 239

11.4.2 Application of CCA to ENSO prediction 240

11.5 ENSO Prediction Using a Constructed Analogue Method 241

11.6 ENSO Prediction Using Linear Inverse Modeling 242

11.6.1 The basic theory 242

11.6.2 Model performance and ENSO dynamics 246

11.7 Comparison of Statistical and Dynamical ENSO Prediction Models 246

12 ENSO's Influence on Marine and Bird Life 249

12.2 El Nino's Influence in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific 250

12.3 Peruvian Anchovies and Guano Birds 252

12.4 Zooplankton off California 256

12.4.2 El Nino and California coastal waters 257

12.4.3 Rossby waves and ENSO currents off the California coast 258

12.4.4 Zooplankton population and El Nino 260

12.5 The Leaky Western Equatorial Pacific Boundary and Australian 'Salmon' 262

12.5.1 Physical background 262

12.5.2 The effect of coastal ENSO flow on western Australian salmon 264

12.6 Rock Lobsters and the Leeuwin Current off Western Australia 266

12.6.1 Physical background 266

12.6.2 The life cycle of the western rock lobster 268

12.6.3 Prediction of the rock lobster catch 269

12.6.4 Variations of the rock lobster catch and ENSO 269

12.7 Banana Prawns in the Gulf of Carpentaria 271

12.8 Green Turtles on the Great Barrier Reef 273

12.9 Tuna and the Movement of the Equatorial Pacific Warm Pool 275

12.10 Migration of the Black-Throated Blue Warbler 276

Appendix A Empirical Orthogonal Function Analysis (Principal Component Analysis) 283

A.1 Basic Idea 283

A.2 The Higher Order EOFs and Their Principal Components 285

A.2.1 The EOFs are orthogonal 285

A.2.2 The principal components are uncorrelated 286

A.2.3 Representation of X(t) in terms of EOFs 286

A.2.4 Fraction of variance of the time series explained by the ith principal component 287

A.2.5 The meaning of the higher order EOFs 287

A.3 Physics and

EOFs 288

Appendix B Canonical Correlation Analysis 291

B.1 Basic Idea 291

B.2 Canonical Correlation Pairs and Their Correlation Properties 294

B.3 The Meaning of the Higher Order Correlation Pairs 297

B.4 Prediction Y(t) from X(t) Using CCA 298

B.5 Use of Empirical Orthogonal Functions in CCA 299

B.6 Predicting Y(t) Using EOFs and CCA 300.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Louis A. Duhring Fund.

ISBN:

9780120885480

0120885484

OCLC:

179800002