Weakening of the biennial relationship between Central American and equatorial South American rainfall in recent decades

Abstract

There is a rainfall variability biennial relationship between Central America (CA) and equatorial South America (ESA) over the tropical western hemisphere, which is known to have arisen due to the combined effects of ENSO and tropical North Atlantic (TNA) SST. Here, the authors report that this biennial rainfall relationship between CA and ESA has weakened remarkably since 2000, with weakening in both in-phase and out-of-phase rainfall transitions. The observed decadal changes in the biennial relationship between CA and ESA rainfall can be attributed to changes in the effects of ENSO and TNA SST since 2000, which may be associated with more frequent occurrences of the central Pacific or ‘Modoki’ type El Niño. The weakening of the association with ENSO for CA rainfall since 2000 might have given rise to the weakening of the in-phase rain transition from CA rainfall to the following ESA rainfall. The weakened linkage between boreal-winter ESA rainfall and the subsequent boreal-summer TNA SST since 2000 may have resulted in the weakening of the out-of-phase rainfall transition from boreal-winter ESA rainfall to the subsequent boreal-summer CA rainfall.

Keywords

• Biennial variability
• tropical rainfall
• ENSO
• tropical North Atlantic
• twenty-first century climate shift
• Central America
• equatorial South America