Towards Operational Prediction of El Niño by a Coupled Ocean — Atmosphere Model

Abstract

The 1997–1998 El Niño has turned out to be one of the largest events in history in terms of the anomaly of sea surface temperature in the Pacific equatorial area. The atmospheric general circulation in and around the Pacific tropical area has been greatly affected by this El Niño and thus its possible direct or indirect influence extends over a number of abnormal weather or extreme events, as are shown in Fig. 1 for the period from Summer 1997 to Spring 1998. In the later part of 1997, dry weather prevailed in Indonesia and Australia, higher temperature in India and Southeast Asia, high temperature with dry weather in the north western part of South America, heavy rainfall in the southern part of the U.S.A. and in the northern part of Mexico, etc. Even the heavy rainfall and high temperatures in the eastern parts of equatorial Africa in late 1997 might have been a result.