{"title":"Unusual and persistent easterlies restrained the 2023/24 El Niño development after a triple-dip La Niña","authors":"Ji-Won Kim, Baijun Tian, Jin-Yi Yu","doi":"10.1038/s41612-024-00890-0","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>The 2023/24 El Niño, emerging after a rare triple-dip La Niña, garnered global attention due to its potential to evolve into an extreme event, given the largest accumulation of warm water in the equatorial western Pacific since 1980. Despite initial expectations, its growth rate unexpectedly decelerated in mid-2023, preventing it from reaching the anticipated intensity. Here, we show through observational analyses that unusual easterly anomalies over the tropical western-central Pacific, persisting after the end of the preceding La Niña, significantly contributed to this slowdown. A prominent east‒west sea surface temperature gradient in the region has been identified as the crucial factor associated with these unusual and persistent easterly anomalies. This temperature gradient is directly attributed to a negative North Pacific Meridional Mode and a deepened thermocline over the Philippine Sea. These findings offer a deeper understanding of the atypical transition from a prolonged multi-year La Niña to an El Niño.</p>","PeriodicalId":19438,"journal":{"name":"npj Climate and Atmospheric Science","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.5000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"npj Climate and Atmospheric Science","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-024-00890-0","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"METEOROLOGY & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The 2023/24 El Niño, emerging after a rare triple-dip La Niña, garnered global attention due to its potential to evolve into an extreme event, given the largest accumulation of warm water in the equatorial western Pacific since 1980. Despite initial expectations, its growth rate unexpectedly decelerated in mid-2023, preventing it from reaching the anticipated intensity. Here, we show through observational analyses that unusual easterly anomalies over the tropical western-central Pacific, persisting after the end of the preceding La Niña, significantly contributed to this slowdown. A prominent east‒west sea surface temperature gradient in the region has been identified as the crucial factor associated with these unusual and persistent easterly anomalies. This temperature gradient is directly attributed to a negative North Pacific Meridional Mode and a deepened thermocline over the Philippine Sea. These findings offer a deeper understanding of the atypical transition from a prolonged multi-year La Niña to an El Niño.
期刊介绍：
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science is an open-access journal encompassing the relevant physical, chemical, and biological aspects of atmospheric and climate science. The journal places particular emphasis on regional studies that unveil new insights into specific localities, including examinations of local atmospheric composition, such as aerosols.
The range of topics covered by the journal includes climate dynamics, climate variability, weather and climate prediction, climate change, ocean dynamics, weather extremes, air pollution, atmospheric chemistry (including aerosols), the hydrological cycle, and atmosphere–ocean and atmosphere–land interactions. The journal welcomes studies employing a diverse array of methods, including numerical and statistical modeling, the development and application of in situ observational techniques, remote sensing, and the development or evaluation of new reanalyses.
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