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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Non-Gaussian stochastic dynamical model for the El Niño southern oscillation

L. T. Giorgini1,*, W. Moon2,1,†, N. Chen3,‡, and J. S. Wettlaufer4,1,§

  • 1Nordita, Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Stockholm 106 91, Sweden
  • 2Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
  • 3Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
  • 4Departments of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Mathematics and Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA

  • *ludovico.giorgini@su.se
  • †woosok.moon@su.se
  • ‡chennan@math.wisc.edu
  • §john.wettlaufer@yale.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L022065 – Published 27 June, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L022065

Abstract

A nonautonomous stochastic dynamical model approach is developed to describe the seasonal to interannual variability of the El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO). We determine the model coefficients by systematic statistical estimations using partial observations involving only sea surface temperature data. Our approach reproduces the observed seasonal phase locking and its uncertainty, as well as the highly non-Gaussian statistics of ENSO. Finally, we recover the intermittent time series of the hidden processes, including the thermocline depth and the wind bursts.

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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L022065– Published 27 June, 2022
  • Received 1 December 2020
  • Revised 20 May 2021
  • Accepted 10 May 2022
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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