Coupling is key for the tropical Indian and Atlantic oceans to boost super El Niño.

The influences of the tropical Indian and Atlantic oceans on the development of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), especially regarding super El Niño events, have been a subject of debate. In particular, several studies argue that these cross-basin influences may be mere statistical artifacts resulting from the high auto-correlation of ENSO. To clarify this issue, we conduct a series of perfect model hindcast experiments to untangle the individual and synergistic effects of the tropical Indian and Atlantic oceans.

A less cloudy picture of the inter-model spread in future global warming projections.

Model warming projections, forced by increasing greenhouse gases, have a large inter-model spread in both their geographical warming patterns and global mean values. The inter-model warming pattern spread (WPS) limits our ability to foresee the severity of regional impacts on nature and society. This paper focuses on uncovering the feedbacks responsible for the WPS.