Workshop on Recontiling ENSO Chronologies for the Past 500 Years
April 21, 2008
Henry Diaz, of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories, was an organizer
of a "Workshop on Reconciling ENSO Chronologies for the Past 500 Years,"
which took place April 2-3, 2008, in Moorea, French Polynesia. Given the
importance of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system in generating
climatic variability around the globe, the development of an accurate
portrait of ENSO over time is an important goal. This workshop aimed to
evaluate a suite of records, and statistical and dynamical methods for
reconstructing a "best available" ENSO record for the past five centuries
In the last few decades there have been a number of efforts to extend the relatively short instrumental record of ENSO. Workshop attendees wanted to evaluate different ENSO chronologies with an eye toward developing a consolidated set of ENSO indices derived from a variety of reconstruction methodologies. Workshop participants are working towards providing more comprehensive documentation and access to the different reconstructions of ENSO, which are now quite numerous.
An improved understanding of ENSO variability would allow researchers to assess various climate model simulations of past climate, as well as to understand future ENSO variability in the context of global climate change.
| Contact: Henry Diaz |