Revisiting ENSO and IOD contributions to Australian Precipitation
- 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Bologna, Italy
- 2School of Earth, Atmosphere, and Environment, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
- 3School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
Tropical modes of variability, such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), exert a strong influence on the interannual variability of Australian precipitation. Nevertheless, commonly used indices of ENSO and IOD variability display significant co-variability that prevents a robust quantification of the independent contribution of each mode to precipitation anomalies. This co-variability issue is often addressed by statistically removing ENSO or IOD variability from the precipitation field before calculating teleconnection patterns. However, by performing a suite of coupled and uncoupled modelling experiments in which either ENSO or IOD variability is physically removed, we show that ENSO-only-driven precipitation patterns computed by statistically removing the IOD influence significantly underestimate the impact of ENSO on Australian precipitation variability. Inspired by this, we propose a conceptual model that allows one to effectively separate the contribution of each mode to Australian precipitation variability.
How to cite: Liguori, G., McGregor, S., Singh, M., Arblaster, J., and Di Lorenzo, E.: Revisiting ENSO and IOD contributions to Australian Precipitation, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-10456, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-10456, 2022.
