Premium
On the variability of ENSO at millennial timescales
Author(s) -
Wang Geli,
Tsonis Anastasios A.
Publication year - 2008
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 - 10.1029/2008gl035092
Subject(s) - la niña , el niño southern oscillation , proxy (statistics) , climatology , multivariate enso index , scaling , term (time) , southern oscillation , environmental science , geology , physics , mathematics , statistics , geometry , quantum mechanics
We present an analysis of a proxy ENSO record spanning the last 11,000 years and we investigate its scaling properties. We find that the data exhibit positive long‐term correlations (persistence) which extend to timescales up to half a millennium. This will indicate that a given ENSO state (El Nino or La Nina) may dominate the tropical Pacific for centuries. This provides new information on ENSO dynamics and its worldwide effects and opens new questions as to the kinds of mechanisms are responsible for these long‐term correlations.