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  • Brief Communications Arising
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El Niño and intense tropical cyclones

Nature volume 526, pages E4–E5 (2015)Cite this article

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A Brief Communications Arising to this article was published on 29 October 2015

arising from F.-F. Jin, J. Boucharel & I.-I. Lin Nature 516, 82–85 (2014); doi:10.1038/nature13958

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences global climate as well as extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and tropical cyclones, leading to large societal impacts globally1,2,3. Jin et al.4 have shown that El Niño—the warm phase of ENSO—effectively discharges oceanic heat into the central to eastern North Pacific basin through the subsurface ocean after its wintertime peak, resulting in high tropical cyclone activity during the following tropical cyclone peak season in the eastern North Pacific, which has significant implications for seasonal prediction of tropical cyclone activity in the eastern North Pacific. However, we question the robustness of their hypothesis on the following grounds: (1) the correlation between subsurface ocean heat delivered by El Niño and tropical cyclone activity is statistically exaggerated; and (2) wintertime ENSO conditions, which are claimed to have predictive value, are not strongly correlated with tropical cyclone activity during the subsequent summer. These factors imply that the hypothesis of ref. 4 has limitations in practical seasonal tropical cyclone prediction. There is a Reply to this Brief Communication Arising by Jin, F.-F., Boucharel, J. & Lin, I.-I. Nature 526, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature15547 (2015).

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Figure 1: Relationships of subsurface ocean heat delivered by El Niño (PC2) and the ENSO signal (Niño3.4) with tropical cyclone activity in the eastern North Pacific.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Typhoon Research Center, Jeju National University, 102 Jejudaehak-ro, Jeju, 690-756, South Korea

    Il-Ju Moon & Sung-Hun Kim

  2. NOAA/Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Miami, 33149, Florida, USA

    Chunzai Wang

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  1. Il-Ju Moon
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  2. Sung-Hun Kim
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  3. Chunzai Wang
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Contributions

I.-J.M. conceived the idea, designed the study, and wrote the Comment. S.-H.K. conducted most of the analysis and discovered main results. C.W. contributed to the interpretation of the results and editing of the manuscript.

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Moon, IJ., Kim, SH. & Wang, C. El Niño and intense tropical cyclones. Nature 526, E4–E5 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15546

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