About this Research Topic

Background

The El Niño-South Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon is the most important tropical climate variability on the interannual timescale, but its impacts are not limited in the tropics, affecting weather and climate worldwide through far-field teleconnections. Over the past four decades, increasing attentions have been given to the study of features, mechanisms and, impacts and prediction of ENSO. In the ENSO cycle, the warming and cooling of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the tropical Pacific are coupled with large-scale atmospheric circulation anomalies, interacting with multiscale variability and influencing local and remote weather and climate.

In the context of a changing global climate, challenges of current and future ENSO research are mainly attributed to complicated ENSO behaviors. The ENSO complexity, essentially originated from the nonlinearity of ENSO itself and its interactions with other climate modes, makes it more difficult to predict and thus prevent and mitigate ENSO-related disasters. Better understanding towards the ENSO nonlinearity and complexity, as well as the development of corresponding predictability theory and prediction methodology of complex ENSO behaviors, is essential to enhance capabilities for the subseasonal-interannual climate prediction.

In this Research Topic, we welcome contributions of Original Research Articles and Review Articles regarding the nonlinearity and complexity in ENSO. The highlights of this Research Topic include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Observational and modeling studies on the features of the ENSO nonlinearity and complexity;
• Dynamical and thermodynamic mechanisms of forming the ENSO nonlinearity and complexity;
• Impacts of the complex ENSO behaviors on multiscale phenomena in tropics and extratropics;
• Advances in the development of predictability theory and prediction methodology of ENSO complexity.

Keywords: ENSO, complexity, mechanisms, impacts and prediction

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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