The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) are the primary natural climate variability drivers impacting Australia. Contrast that to AGW as the man-made driver. These two categories of natural and man-made causes form the basis of the bushfire attribution discussion, yet the naturally occurring dipoles are not well understood. Chapter 12 of the book describes a model for ENSO; and even though IOD has similarities to ENSO in terms of its dynamics (a CC of around 0.3) the fractional impact of the two indices is ultimately responsible for whether a temperature extreme will occur in a region such as Australia (not to mention other indices such as MJO and SAM).
Continue readingIOD
The PDO
In Chapter 12 of the book, the math model behind the equatorial Pacific ocean dipole known as the ENSO (El Nino /Southern Oscillation) was presented. Largely distinct to that, the climate index referred to as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) occurs in the northern Pacific. As with modeling the AMO, understanding the dynamics of the PDO helps cross-validate the LTE theory for dipoles such as ENSO, as reported at the 2018 Fall Meeting of the AGU (poster). Again, if we can apply an identical forcing for PDO as for AMO and ENSO, then we can further cross-validate the LTE model. So by reusing that same forcing for an independent climate index such as PDO, we essentially remove a large number of degrees of freedom from the model and thus defend against claims of over-fitting.
Continue readingAO, PNA, & SAM Models
In Chapter 11, we developed a general formulation based on Laplace’s Tidal Equations (LTE) to aid in the analysis of standing wave climate models, focusing on the ENSO and QBO behaviors in the book. As a means of cross-validating this formulation, it makes sense to test the LTE model against other climate indices. So far we have extended this to PDO, AMO, NAO, and IOD, and to complete the set, in this post we will evaluate the northern latitude indices comprised of the Arctic Oscillation/Northern Annular Mode (AO/NAM) and the Pacific North America (PNA) pattern, and the southern latitude index referred to as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). We will first evaluate AO and PNA in comparison to its close relative NAO and then SAM …
The Indian Ocean Dipole
In Chapter 12, we concentrated on the Pacific ocean dipole referred to as ENSO (El Nino/Southern Oscillation). A dipole that shares some of the characteristics of ENSO is the neighboring Indian Ocean Dipole and its gradient measure the Dipole Mode Index.
The IOD is important because it is correlated with India subcontinent monsoons. It also shows a correlation to ENSO, which is quite apparent by comparing specific peak positions, with a correlation coefficient of 0.2. This post will describe the differences found via perturbing the ENSO model …
