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Variability in the El Nino-Southern Oscillation through a Glacial-Interglacial Cycle

Publisher
British Geological Survey (BGS)
Updated
13 August 2026
Topic
Not set
Licence
Not set

Summary

PROJECT DETAILS ONLY - NO DATA. The El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most potent source of interannual climate variability. Uncertainty surrounding the impact of greenhouse warming on ENSO strength and frequency has stimulated efforts to develop a better understanding of the sensitivity of ENSO to climate change. Here we use annually banded corals from Papua New Guinea to show that ENSO has existed for the past 130,000 years, operating even during "glacial" times of substantially reduced regional and global temperature and changed solar forcing. However, we also find that during the 20th century ENSO has been strong compared with ENSO of previous cool (glacial) and warm (interglacial) times. The observed pattern of change in amplitude may be due to the combined effects of ENSO dampening during cool glacial conditions and ENSO forcing by precessional orbital variations

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Published Paper 13/8/2026

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Additional information

Source Metadata
XML, HTML
Date added
12 August 2026
Harvest GUID
9df8df52-d68f-37a8-e044-0003ba9b0d98
Extent (Latitude)
-2.0000° to -8.0000°
Extent (Longitude)
140.0000° to 154.0000°
Dataset reference date (publication)
2001
Frequency of update
notApplicable
Access constraints
The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.
Responsible party
University of Edinburgh (principalInvestigator); British Geological Survey (distributor, pointOfContact)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng