El Niño on the Devil's Staircase: Annual Subharmonic Steps to Chaos
- 1 April 1994
- journal article
- other
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 264 (5155) , 70-72
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.264.5155.70
Abstract
The source of irregularity in El Niño, the large interannual climate variation of the Pacific ocean-atmosphere system, has remained elusive. Results from an El Niño model exhibit transition to chaos through a series of frequency-locked steps created by nonlinear resonance with the Earth's annual cycle. The overlapping of these resonances leads to the chaotic behavior. This transition scenario explains a number of climate model results and produces spectral characteristics consistent with currently available data.Keywords
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