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Science 1 April 1994:
Vol. 264. no. 5155, pp. 70 - 72
DOI: 10.1126/science.264.5155.70
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Articles

El Niño on the Devil's Staircase: Annual Subharmonic Steps to Chaos

Fei-Fei Jin 1, J. David Neelin 2, and Michael Ghil 3

1 Department of Meteorology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
2 Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1565, USA.
3 Department of Atmospheric Sciences and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1565, USA.

The source of irregularity in El Niño, the large interannual climate variation of the Pacific ocean-atmosphere system, has remained elusive. Results from an El Niño model exhibit transition to chaos through a series of frequency-locked steps created by nonlinear resonance with the Earth's annual cycle. The overlapping of these resonances leads to the chaotic behavior. This transition scenario explains a number of climate model results and produces spectral characteristics consistent with currently available data.

Submitted on October 29, 1993
Accepted on January 31, 1994


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Stochastic theories for the irregularity of ENSO.
R. Kleeman (2008)
Phil Trans R Soc A 366, 2509-2524
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El Nino Chaos: Overlapping of Resonances Between the Seasonal Cycle and the Pacific Ocean-Atmosphere Oscillator.
E. Tziperman, L. Stone, M. A. Cane, and H. Jarosh (1994)
Science 264, 72-74
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