Premium
An ENSO shift revisited
Author(s) -
Solow Andrew R.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2006gl027632
Subject(s) - el niño southern oscillation , climatology , multivariate enso index , global warming , environmental science , southern oscillation , meteorology , econometrics , climate change , geology , mathematics , geography , oceanography
An influential 1996 paper presented a statistical analysis showing that the prolonged ENSO warm event of the early 1990's was inconsistent with the historical pattern of ENSO variability and therefore concluded that there had been a shift in ENSO behavior possibly connected to global warming. A fundamental problem with this earlier analysis is that the data used to test for a shift in ENSO behavior were not independent of the data used to identify the hypothetical shift. A new analysis is presented that avoids this problem by using more recent data. The results raise a question about the earlier finding.