ENSO Workshop Australia 2015

ENSO Extremes and Diversity: Dynamics, Teleconnection, and Impacts

First Announcement

Sydney, Australia, 4-6 February 2015

Our knowledge of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has advanced over the last 30 years with increasing availability and quality of observational data, development of ENSO theories, paleo-proxy reconstructions, and improvements in climate models.  Over this time, much has been learnt about the general behaviour of ENSO, as underscored by the success of theories like recharge-discharge oscillator and delayed oscillator. The occurrence of extreme El Niños, such as the 1982/83 and 1997/98 events, however, have highlighted the importance of nonlinear processes in the ENSO cycle.  The 1997/1998 El Niño event, the strongest on record with widespread destructive impacts, was dubbed the ‘climate event of the 20^th Century’.  Such extreme events are rare and not well constrained by our limited observations.  It is crucial that climate models are able to simulate such phenomenon, but can they do it?  What are the physical characteristics, teleconnections, and impacts that define such phenomenon?  How is non-linearity related with scale interaction, event diversity, and what are the implications for predictability?  How well do climate models simulate ENSO non-linearity?  Do we have any paleo evidence for ENSO non-linearity in the distant past?  How does this non-linearity evolve with internal variability (e.g., the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation) and respond to external forcing such as the greenhouse gas forcing? 

Please join us for stimulating discussions on these issues in a 3-day workshop ‘ENSO Extremes and Diversity: Dynamics, Teleconnection, and Impacts’ to be held in Sydney, Australia, 4^th-6^th of February 2015.  The workshop will be an opportunity to review gaps in our understanding of ENSO and to formulate a plan for how our community should move forward to fill these gaps. 

Workshop attendance will be limited to 40 persons.  Please register your interest in participating, including the potential topic, with Agus Santoso (a.santoso@unsw.edu.au) and Guojian Wang (guojian.wang@csiro.au) by 20^th of October.   Abstract deadline is 21^st of November.   Some travel support is available for young scientists and those from developing countries.

Organising committee:

Wenju Cai (CSIRO, Australia)

Agus Santoso (UNSW, Australia)

Mat Collins (University of Exeter, UK)

Fei-Fei Jin (U. Hawaii, USA)

Mike McPhaden (NOAA/PMEL, USA)

Eric Guilyardi (LOCEAN/IPSL, France)

Dietmar Dommenget (Monash University, Australia)

Guojian Wang (CSIRO, Australia)