A Review of Paleo El Niño-Southern Oscillation

Abstract

The Earth has seen El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—the leading mode of interannual climate variability—for at least millennia and likely over millions of years. This paper reviews previous studies from perspectives of both paleoclimate proxy data (from traditional sediment records to the latest high-resolution oxygen isotope records) and model simulations (including earlier intermediate models to the latest isotope-enabled coupled models). It summarizes current understanding of ENSO’s past evolution during both interglacial and glacial periods and its response to external climatic forcings such as volcanic, orbital, ice-sheet and greenhouse gas forcings. Due to the intrinsic irregularity of ENSO and its complicated relationship with other climate phenomena, reconstructions and model simulations of ENSO variability are subject to inherent difficulties in interpretations and biases. Resolving these challenges through new data syntheses, new statistical methods, more complex climate model simulations as well as direct model-data comparisons can potentially better constrain uncertainty regarding ENSO’s response to future global warming.

Keywords

• ENSO
• paleoclimate
• proxy data
• climate model