Impacts of El Niño-Southern Oscillation on Earth's Radiant Energy Budget

Abstract

We investigate the impact of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (i.e., El Niño and La Niña events) on the radiant energy budget (REB) of our home planet—Earth. Using the most recent and extensive datasets available from CERES energy balanced and filled (CERES-EBAF), we confirm and extend upon prior works. Particularly, we compare the mean El Niño/La Niña radiance anomalies in the tropics to the mean normal state over 2001–2022. Modifications to the energy budget's components (absorbed solar power and emitted thermal power) exceed 10% within the western and central Pacific—up to 20% for net power. Principal component analysis results further suggest that ENSO contributes approximately 34.0%, 44.9%, and 21.3% of the total variance in absorbed power, emitted power, and net power, respectively. Finally, a comparative study between observational data and the numerical simulations suggests that current climate models cannot quantitatively capture the signals of ENSO in Earth's REB even though some of them can reproduce dominant features. Our investigations based on the comprehensive observational datasets for Earth can serve as a foundation for exploring the impacts of large-scale atmospheric and climate processes on the REBs of other planets.