An El Nino That“Failed to Appear”,an El Nino That Was“Hiding”and a Prediction of the Next El Nino

作     者：David Holmes Douglass 

作者机构：Department of Physics and Astronomy University of RochesterRochesterNew YorkUSA 

出 版 物：《Atmospheric and Climate Sciences》 (大气和气候科学（英文）)

年 卷 期：2018年第8卷第1期

页      面：55-62页

学科分类：1002[医学-临床医学] 100214[医学-肿瘤学] 10[医学] 

主　　题：El Nino ENSO Climate Phase-Locked States Climate Shifts 

摘      要：This paper discusses why model predictions of El Niño events fail. We begin by commenting on a recent retrospective about the failed prediction of an El Niño during 1975 McPhaden et al. state that “for all the advances in seasonal forecasting over the past 40 years, the fundamental problem of skillfully predicting the development of ENSO events and their consequences still challenges the scientific community. In a second paper McPhaden, this time alone, discusses the case of a “monster El Niño “that failed to materialize in 2014. Unbeknown to McPhaden, these two climate “nonevents have already been discussed and “explained in some details in papers that report that the climate system consists of a series of finite time segments bounded by abrupt climate shifts. These finite time segments are phase-locked to the 2nd or 3rd subharmonic of an annual forcing. This paper will be an updated review of these “explanations. Additionally, we note that the climate system is presently (August 2017) in a phase-locked state of period 3 years that began in 2009 to make a qualified prediction: The next El Niño will occur during boreal winter of 2018 unless this phase-locked state terminates before then.