Philander S.G. El Nino, La Nina, and the Southern Oscillation

International Geophysics Series, 1990, Volume 46. Academic Press, New York, London, 1990. – 304 pp.
Northern America suffered an exceptionally hot and dry summer in 1988. India occasionally experiences a disastrous failure of the monsoons. In Africa, severe droughts can persist over large areas for extended periods. These are all examples of climate variability that is caused by complex interactions between the atmosphere and the water, ice, and land surfaces beneath it. Efforts to understand and simulate these interactions, especially those between the ocean and atmosphere, have thus far focused on a phenomenon known as the Southern Oscillation, an irregular interannual fluctuation between warm El Nino and cold La Nina states. This oscillation has its largest signature in and over the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans, but it affects oceanic and atmospheric conditions globally. The Southern Oscillation attracted enormous public attention in 1983 when its warm El Nino phase attained an exceptionally large amplitude and was associated with devastating droughts over the western tropical Pacific, torrential floods over the eastern tropical Pacific, and damaging weather patterns over various parts of the world. That event caught oceanographers and meteorologists completely by surprise. When a group of experts met in Princeton, New Jersey in October 1982 to discuss plans for a program to study El Nino, no one was aware that the most severe episode of the past century was occurring at that time. Although the interactions between the ocean and atmosphere that cause the Southern Oscillation were reasonably well understood by 1982, little had been done to put that knowledge to practical use. Matters were very different by the time of the next El Nino in 1987. By then the National Meteorological Center in Washington, D.C. had started to issue a monthly bulletin that describes, in detail, current oceanic and atmospheric conditions related to the Southern Oscillation. It was possible to follow the erratic development of El Nino of 1987 as it occurred. Such information is now routinely available because the tropical Pacific is being monitored with a variety of instruments.The Southern Oscillation: Variability of the Tropical Atmosphere
Oceanic Variability in the Tropics
Oceanic Adjustment: I
Oceanic Adjustment: II
Models of the Tropical Atmosphere
Interactions between the Ocean and Atmosphere