Characterizing spatial standing waves of ENSO

In Chapter 12 of the book, we did not delve into the details of the spatial aspects of the LTE-based ENSO standing wave model to any great degree. We did include a concise derivation of the steps involved in creating separable equations, corresponding to solutions for the temporal and spatial parts of the standing wave dipole. However, only passing mention was made of the unique nature of the spatio-temporal coordination which emerges from the model — and which should be observed in the empirically observed behavior. We can do that now with the abundance of comprehensive data available.

Figure 1: The challenge is to capture the spatial profile of the ENSO standing wave dipole — the El Nino to La Nina oscillation, with the dipole node location indicated by the yellow bar (site)
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