Articles | Volume 8, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-1009-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-1009-2017
Research article
 | 
14 Nov 2017
Research article |  | 14 Nov 2017

Atmospheric torques and Earth's rotation: what drove the millisecond-level length-of-day response to the 2015–2016 El Niño?

Sébastien B. Lambert, Steven L. Marcus, and Olivier de Viron

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Cited articles

Barnes, R. T. H., Hide, R., White, A. A., and Wilson, C. A.: Atmospheric angular momentum fluctuations, length-of-day changes and polar motion, P. Roy. Soc. Lond. A, 387, 31–73, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1983.0050, 1983.
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Carter, W., Robertson, D., Pettey, J., Tapley, B., Schutz, B., Eanes, R., and Lufeng, M.: Variations in the rotation of the Earth, Science, 224, 957–961, 1984.
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Chen, X. and Wallace, J. M.: Orthogonal PDO and ENSO Indices, J. Climate, 29, 3883–3892, 2016.
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Short summary
We explain how the extreme 2015–2016 El Niño event lengthened the day by 0.8 ms. The 2015–2016 event was an El Niño event of a different type compared to previous extreme events; thus, we expected different mechanisms of coupling with the solid Earth. We showed that the atmospheric torque on the American topography, usually acting alone during classical El Niños, was, in 2015–2016, augmented by a friction torque over the Pacific Ocean and inherent to the different nature of this particular event.
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