Analysis of the ENSO signal in tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures observed by MSU, 1979-2000

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signal in the troposphere and lower stratosphere was investigated using Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) data for the period 1979-2000. Empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) were computed separately for zonal-mean and eddy temperatures in the Tropics and shown to provide a compact, physically intuitive description of ENSO that captures many of the details of its inception and evolution. Regressions of the MSU data on the principal components (PCs) of the tropical EOFs were then used to estimate the global signal of ENSO. The results show that ENSO accounts for over two-thirds of the temperature variability in the tropical troposphere, where its signature is composed of distinct zonal-mean and eddy patterns whose evolution is not simultaneous. In the tropical stratosphere, and outside the Tropics, ENSO explains a much smaller fraction of the variance (∼10%), and manifests itself purely in the form of eddy anomaly patterns. The PCs of the eddy EOFs of the tropical stratosphere are almost perfectly correlated with those of the troposphere, suggesting that together the EOFs describe the vertical structure of equatorial waves. Volcanic eruptions and the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) are responsible for most of the variability (∼87%) of the tropical lower stratosphere, and this variability is uncorrelated with ENSO; in the tropical troposphere, the effect of volcanic eruptions is detectable but small, accounting for about 3% of the variance.