Driver of El Niño on orbital-cycle timescales

A study of sea surface temperatures and the thermocline, a subsurface water layer in which temperature decreases rapidly with depth, in the western equatorial Pacific over the past 142,000 years finds a cycle in thermocline temperature with a time-scale of half an orbital precession, around 9,400 or 12,700 years, that is directly linked to temperature fluctuations of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation; the link may arise from the interplay of incoming solar radiation between the two hemispheres and highlights the thermocline as a likely driver of climate change in orbital cycles, according to the authors.

###

Article #19-15510: “Half-precessional cycle of thermocline temperature in the western equatorial Pacific and its bihemispheric dynamics,” by Zhimin Jian et al.

MEDIA CONTACT: Zhimin Jian, Tongji University, Shanghai, CHINA; e-mail:

[email protected]