How Much Energy Is Transferred from the Winds to the Thermocline on ENSO Time Scales?

Abstract

Abstract The dynamics of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) are studied in terms of the balance between energy input from the winds (via wind power) and changes in the storage of available potential energy in the tropical ocean. Presently, there are broad differences in the way global general circulation models simulate the dynamics, magnitude, and phase of ENSO events; hence, there is a need for simple, physically based metrics to allow for model evaluation. This energy description is a basinwide, integral, quantitative approach, ideal for intermodel comparison, that assesses model behavior in the subsurface ocean. Here it is applied to a range of ocean models and data assimilations within ENSO spatial and temporal scales. The onset of an El Niño is characterized by a decrease in wind power that leads to a decrease in available potential energy, and hence a flatter thermocline. In contrast, La Niña events are preceded by an increase in wind power that leads to an increase in the available potential energy and a steeper thermocline. The wind power alters the available potential energy via buoyancy power, associated with vertical mass fluxes that modify the slope of the isopycnals. Only a fraction of wind power is converted to buoyancy power. The efficiency of this conversion γ is estimated in this study at 50%–60%. Once the energy is delivered to the thermocline it is subject to small, but important, diffusive dissipation. It is estimated that this dissipation sets the e-folding damping rate α for the available potential energy on the order of 1 yr−1. The authors propose to use the efficiency γ and the damping rate α as two energy-based metrics for evaluating dissipative properties of the ocean component of general circulation models, providing a simple method for understanding subsurface ENSO dynamics and a diagnostic tool for exploring differences between the models.