The roles of atmospheric wind and entrained water temperature (Te) in the second-year cooling of the 2010–12 La Niña event

An intermediate coupled model (ICM) yields a successful real-time prediction of the sea surface temperature (SST) evolution in the tropical Pacific during the 2010–12 La Nina event, whereas many other coupled models fail. It was previously identified that the thermocline effect on the SST (including vertical advection and mixing), as represented by water temperature entrained into the mixed layer (Te) and its relationship with the thermocline fluctuation, is an important factor that affects the second-year cooling in mid-late 2011. Because atmospheric wind forcing is also important to ENSO processes, its role is investigated in this study within the context of real-time prediction of the 2010–12 La Nina event using the ICM in which wind stress anomalies are calculated using an empirical model as a response to SST anomalies. An easterly wind anomaly is observed to persist over the western-central Pacific during 2010–11, which acts to sustain a horse shoe-like Te pattern connecting large negative subsurface thermal anomalies in the central-eastern regions off and on the equator. Sensitivity experiments are conducted using the ICM to demonstrate how its SST predictions are directly affected by the intensity of wind forcing. The second-year cooling in 2011 is not predicted to occur in the ICM if the easterly wind anomaly intensity is weakly represented below certain levels; instead, a surface warming can emerge in 2011, with weak SST variability. The results of the current study indicate that the intensity of interannual wind forcing is equally important to SST evolution during 2010–11 compared with that of the thermocline effect. To correctly predict the observed La Nina conditions in the fall of 2011, the ICM needs to adequately represent the intensity of both the wind forcing and the thermocline effects.