ENSO-Dependent and ENSO-Independent Variability over the Mid-Latitude North Pacific: Observation and Air-Sea Coupled Model Simulation

During El Niño events, the warm anomalies in the eastern tropical Pacific are seen to occur in conjunction with prominent warm anomalies in the North Pacific SSTs off the west coast of North America as well as with cold anomalies in the central North Pacific. This kind of North Pacific response to ENSO is examined in observational data and IPSL air-sea coupled model simulations. Analyses based on observational data and the model output data both support the hypothesis of an "atmospheric bridge concept", i.e., the atmospheric response to ENSO, in turn, forces the extra-tropical SST anomalies associated with the El Niñno event, thereby serving as a bridge between the tropical and extra-tropical Pacific. Regarding the mechanism responsible for this, the ocean dynamical response to the atmospheric forcing is suggested to be active, while the contribution of latent heat flux is also significant. The role of solar radiation, longwave radiation, and sensible heat flux are of minor importance however, as indicated in the model. Further analysis shows that the North Pacific mode, which is linearly independent of ENSO, resembles the El Niño-type SST mode in the northern Pacific, i.e. both take the pattern of a zonally-oriented dipole in the subtropical Pacific, though differ slightly in the location of the anomaly center. The coupling between the North Pacific mode and the atmosphere is found to be mainly via air-sea heat flux exchange in the model. Both solar radiation and longwave radiation play important roles, while the contribution of latent heat flux is nearly negligible.