What Determines the East Asian Winter Temperature during El Niño? — Role of the Early-Onset El Niño and Tropical Indian Ocean Warming

Abstract

Abstract Atmospheric teleconnections from the Pacific El Niño are key to determining the East Asian winter climate. Using the database for Policy Decision-making for Future climate change (d4PDF) large ensemble simulations, the present study investigates a mechanism for the warm and cold East Asian winters during El Niño with a focus on atmospheric teleconnections triggered by anomalous sea surface temperature (SST) patterns in the tropical Indo-Pacific. Our results show that the Western Pacific (WP) teleconnection pattern plays a primary role in the warm winters in East Asia. The WP pattern tends to appear in years when both an early El Niño and the positive phase of the Indian Ocean dipole mode (IOD) develop in boreal autumn. In those years, the tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) strongly warms in the following winter, forming a distinct zonal contrast in precipitation anomalies over the tropical Indo-Pacific through a reduced Walker circulation. The Rossby wave source anomalies indicate that the WP pattern is associated with the weakened Indo-Pacific Walker circulation. By contrast, the WP pattern does not dominate in the cold winters due to the absence of strong TIO warming. The present study proposes a mechanism that promotes excitation of the WP pattern through the upper-troposphere divergence in East Asia associated with the Walker circulation modulated by the tropical Indo-Pacific interbasin interaction.