Tropical Tropospheric Temperature Variations Caused by ENSO and Their Influence on the Remote Tropical Climate*

Abstract

The warming of the entire tropical free troposphere in response to El Nin o is well established, and suggests a tropical mechanism for the El Nin o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnection. The potential impact of this warming on remote tropical climates is examined through investigating the adjustment of a single-column model to imposed tropospheric temperature variations, assuming that ENSO controls interannual tropospheric temperature variations at all tropical locations. The column model predicts the impact of these variations in three typical tropical climate states (precipitation evaporation; precipitation evaporation; no convection) over a slab mixed layer ocean. Model precipitation and sea surface temperature (SST) respond significantly to the imposed tropospheric forcing in the first two climate states. Their amplitude and phase are sensitive to the imposed mixed layer depth, with the nature of the response depending on how fast the ocean adjusts to imposed tropospheric temperature forcing. For larger mixed layer depth, the SST lags the tropospheric temperature by a longer time, allowing greater disequilibrium between atmosphere and ocean. This causes larger surface flux variations, which drive larger precipitation variations. Moist convective processes are responsible for communicating the tropospheric temperature signal to the surface in this model.