Abstract
Recent studies have documented that the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO)
has impacts in extreme dry/wet conditions over tropical regions and in
atmospheric state. They are based, however, in correlation analysis, and
therefore do not consider non-linear interactions nor they establish
cause-effect relationships.In this study we introduce a generalization
of the non-linear Granger causality (GC) test to identify causal
relations between MJO and hydrological extremes. The method is able to
identify causal relations under noisy, nonlinear and non-stationary
scenarios. A probabilistic extension is also introduced where the causal
test operates directly on the marginal likelihood (also called evidence)
of the observations, which is analytic. We apply our proposed method to
MJO and satellite-based soil moisture (SM) data, and revisit the global
teleconnection patterns induced by MJO events. Since El
Ni\~no Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a
modulating factor that can result in abnormal SM global distributions,
we also include it in the analysis as a potential driver of SM
variability. Including ENSO allows us to differentiate the effect of the
MJO and ENSO on the global SM anomalies and to learn the causal graph of
their cause-effect relationships, and also the mutual relation between
MJO and ENSO extreme events.