Relation between Climate Variability in Korea and Two Types of El Niño, and Their Sensitivity to Definition of Two Types of El Niño

Abstract

Recently, several studies pointed out that there are distinct two types of El Niño events based on the spatial pattern of SST. Since the two types of El Niño have different impacts on global climate, it is quite important to identify the type to assess and predict the regional climate variability. So far, however, there are still many different definitions to identify the two types of El Niño from the different studies. In this study, we investigated a sensitivity of the impacts on climate variability over the Korean Peninsula corresponding to the definition of two-types of El Niño. After checking pre-existing definitions and other possible definition, it is suggested here that two different definitions exhibit relatively strong relationship between El Niño events and the Korean climate variables when two types of El Niño are separated. In addition to the Korean climate, the two types of El Niño show quite distinct global teleconnection patterns when the definitions are used.