EGU22-10456
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-10456
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Revisiting ENSO and IOD contributions to Australian Precipitation

Giovanni Liguori1,2, Shayne McGregor2, Martin Singh2, Julie Arblaster2, and Emanuele Di Lorenzo3
Giovanni Liguori et al.
  • 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.