Introduction
A teleconnection is described as a variation of remote climates, and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an example of such a phenomenon. It means that changes in the atmosphere in one place can affect weather in a different place that is miles away. ENSO is a phenomenon that changes periodically between two phases: El Niño and La Niña in the Pacific Ocean (Xie et al. 930). ENSO has adverse effects on regions far from the tropical Pacific Ocean. This variation of the Earth’s atmosphere affects agriculture, freshwater availability, and economic activity around the globe. ENSO teleconnection affects surface temperature, atmospheric circulation, and precipitation (Varikoden et al.). The effects of ENSO can persist for years, and this has societal impacts.
The periodic variation in the wind patterns over the easter Pacific Ocean affects the climate in many subtropics and tropics. ENSO plays a significant role in Oman’s intervariable weather and climate. During El Niño phases, dry and cold air from the Pacific Ocean is blown into Oman regions with warm and moist air. This causes significant changes in the weather in the area (Tejavath et al. 3447). During El Niño, warmer water moves eastwards, leading to changes in pressure. When tropical water is warm and cool, pressure differences shift, causing atmospheric patterns to change and alter precipitation patterns.
The patterns of El Niño and La Niña have unique characteristics, and therefore there is variation in weather (Domeisen et al. 42). The atmospheric effects due to the sea surface temperature influence the weather and climate of other remote areas worldwide. ENSO teleconnections evolve, and this increases the complexity of understanding its impact. Although it is difficult to determine the causes of the various processes on land and in oceans across the world, ENSO is a powerful force and has had a dominant influence on season climate in many areas.
Study Area
The study area has a tropical desert climate with summer rains in the north and southern areas caused by the monsoon. Oman rainfall has a year-to-year variability, and ENSO is a mechanism influencing this precipitation in the sultanate (Tejavath et al. 3456). The summer rainfall varies yearly and is caused by atmospheric influences from the Pacific Ocean. A wider region in Oman experiences cooler than normal conditions before the winter peak of El Niño. At this peak, dry and cold currents blow towards the Asian continent from mid-June to mid-September. The cycle then repeats itself every two to seven years.
Finding
ENSO atmospheric teleconnections influence climate and weather conditions over other parts of the globe. In the Pacific Ocean, during normal conditions, trade winds blow west along the equator. El Niño and La Niña break the usual constraints of the Pacific Ocean. ENSO is a climate phenomenon with two phases: El Niño and La Niña. El Niño is a phenomenon when water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean become abnormally warm. During an event in La Niña, the trade winds are stronger and push towards Asia (Domeisen et al. 10). A change in air convection caused by the ENSO La Niña phase leads to atmospheric temperature and precipitation changes in some regions across Oman (Xie et al. 940). The two phenomena are powerful forces and can shift their effect to places far from the Pacific Ocean. The shifts are known as teleconnections and occur via the tropical ocean surface temperatures in the upper atmosphere. In Oman, summer monsoon rainfall shows notable changes after the Peak of El Niño. The monsoon rainfall is coupled with the effect of the atmosphere and ocean system.
The warm air over Oman and the cold air blowing from the sea interact and bring heavy rain. The cold air over the tropical Pacific Ocean branches to higher altitudes, contributing to weather changes’ circulation patterns. The easterly surface winds that blow along the equator start blowing in eastwards directions. During El Niño, cold and dry air is blown into Oman regions with warm moist air causing a significant change in weather (Gerkaninezhad et al. 337). During the La Niña phase, there is a cooling of the surface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean. Consequently, in the El Niño phase, the water sources in the western pacific expand eastwards, which weakens the circulation of easterly trade winds. This zonal circulation over the Pacific Ocean correlates with the Oman region’s zonal wind. The currents thus affect the amount of summer monsoon rainfall in Oman.
Conclusion
ENSO plays a significant role in climate variability, which has impacts on the ecosystem and society. El Niño is an oceanic phenomenon that visits the east part of the pacific by warming the surface of the ocean periodically between two to seven years. It can change global atmospheric circulation, which affects the weather across the sultanate of Oman. The southern oscillation between La Niña and El Niño results from the interaction of the atmosphere and tropical oceans. The impact of ENSO has other adverse effects, such as causing floods and drought in the regions around the eastern Pacific Ocean. Climatologists can anticipate future ENSO impacts by studying the consequences of its past to combat the adverse effects.
Works Cited
Domeisen, Daniela I. V., et al. “The Teleconnection of El Niño Southern Oscillation to the Stratosphere.” Reviews of Geophysics, vol. 57, no. 1, 2019, pp. 5–47. Crossref, Web.
Gerkaninezhad, Moshozi, et al. “Impact of Climatic Signals on the Wet and Dry Season Precipitation (Case Study: Persian Gulf and Oman Sea Watersheds).” Journal of the Earth and Space Physics, vol. 44, no. 2, 2018, pp. 333-349.
Tejavath, Charan Teja, et al. “A PMIP3 Narrative of Modulation of ENSO Teleconnections to the Indian Summer Monsoon by Background Changes in the Last Millennium.” Climate Dynamics, vol. 53, no. 5–6, 2019, pp. 3445–3461. Crossref, Web.
Varikoden, Hamza, et al. “Rainfall over Oman and Its Teleconnection with El Niño Southern Oscillation.” Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 9, no. 8, 2016. Crossref, Web.
Xie, Fei, et al. “Effect of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool on Lower-Stratospheric Water Vapor and Comparison with the Effect of ENSO.” Journal of Climate, vol. 31, no. 3, 2018, pp. 929–943. Crossref, Web.