ENSO Feedback Biases Common to Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled and
Atmosphere-Only Simulations of CMIP6 Climate Models
Abstract
Climate models reproduce sea surface temperature (SST) variability of El
Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) despite systematic feedback errors.
Atmospheric feedback in response to ENSO’s SST anomalies remains biased
even in atmosphere-only simulations, but the reason therein is unclear.
This study focuses on atmospheric internal processes to reveal ENSO
feedback biases common to the atmosphere-ocean coupled historical and
atmosphere-only simulations of CMIP6. The net heat flux feedback becomes
comparable to observations once the observed SST is prescribed, but the
central Pacific zonal wind feedback is yet underestimated albeit a
realistic equatorial precipitation-SST relation. The wind feedback bias
is attributed to the wind responses to the equatorial precipitation
anomalies that seasonally erroneously decline in boreal late winter,
common to both the coupled and atmosphere-only simulations. The model’s
mean state with peak-reduced and broad deep convective areas is
favorable for enhancing the wind-precipitation relation and thus ENSO
dynamic feedback.