The 1997/98 El Niño: A test for climate models

[1] Version 3 of the Hadley Centre Atmospheric Model (HadAM3) has been used to demonstrate one means of comparing a general circulation model with observations for a specific climate perturbation, namely the strong 1997/98 El Nino. This event was characterized by the collapse of the tropical Pacific's Walker circulation, caused by the lack of a zonal sea surface temperature gradient during the El Nino. Relative to normal years, cloud altitudes were lower in the western portion of the Pacific and higher in the eastern portion. HadAM3 likewise produced the observed collapse of the Walker circulation, and it did a reasonable job of reproducing the west/east cloud structure changes. This illustrates that the 1997/98 El Nino serves as a useful means of testing cloud-climate interactions in climate models.