"As super El Niño strengthens, study suggests that climate change is intensifying El Ninos" by @borenbears.bsky.social for @apnews.com [Important data & study; But like UNC's John Bruno, I disagree w/ the authors' interpretation of the data]: independent.co.uk 🧵
www.independent.co.uk
Their instrumental SST data (see below) show a decline in recent decades in the amplitude of variability during the precise period when anthropogenic radiative forcing has increased the most. That goes against the hypothesis of an increase in ENSO variability related to anthropogenic forcing.
In a previous study w/ Mark Cane & co using the Cane-Zebiak model of El Niño (michaelmann.net) we showed that natural (volcanic+solar) forcing leads to an uptick in amplitude of ENSO variability during the last two decades of 20th century that closely matches the pattern seen above.
Our simulations (see above) predict large increases in ENSO variability during mid 1200s & early 1600s due to volcanic forcing events, but they have no coral data from these time intervals, so there’s no way to see if their corals capture that behavior--a critical test in my view.