Modeling El Niño and its tropical teleconnections during the last glacial‐interglacial cycle
- 5 December 2003
- journal article
- Published by American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Geophysical Research Letters
- Vol. 30 (23)
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2003gl018553
Abstract
Simulations with the NCAR Climate System Model (CSM), a global, coupled ocean‐atmosphere‐sea ice model, for the last glacial‐interglacial cycle reproduce recent estimates, based on alkenones and Mg/Ca ratios, of sea surface temperature (SST) changes and gradients in the tropical Pacific and predict weaker El Niños/La Niñas compared to present for the Holocene and stronger El Niños/La Niñas for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Changes for the LGM (Holocene) are traced to a weakening (strengthening) of the tropical Pacific zonal SST gradient, wind stresses, and upwelling and a sharpening (weakening) of the tropical thermocline. Results suggest that proxy evidence of weaker precipitation variability in New Guinea and Ecuador are explained not only by changes in El Niño/La Niña but also changes in the atmospheric circulation and hydrologic cycle.This publication has 19 references indexed in Scilit:
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