Butterfly effect and a self-modulating El Niño response to global warming

El Niño and La Niña, collectively referred to as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), are not only highly consequential 1 – 6 but also strongly nonlinear 7 – 14 . For example, the maximum warm anomalies of El Niño, which occur in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean, are larger than the maximum cold anomalies of La Niña, which are centred in the equatorial central Pacific Ocean 7 – 9 . The associated atmospheric nonlinear thermal damping cools the equatorial Pacific during El Niño but warms it during La Niña 15 , 16 . Under greenhouse warming, climate models project an increase in the frequency of strong El Niño and La Niña events, but the change differs vastly across models 17 , which is partially attributed to internal variability 18 – 23 . Here we show that like a butterfly effect 24 , an infinitesimal random perturbation to identical initial conditions induces vastly different initial ENSO variability, which systematically affects its response to greenhouse warming a century later. In experiments with higher initial variability, a greater cumulative oceanic heat loss from ENSO thermal damping reduces stratification of the upper equatorial Pacific Ocean, leading to a smaller increase in ENSO variability under subsequent greenhouse warming. This self-modulating mechanism operates in two large ensembles generated using two different models, each commencing from identical initial conditions but with a butterfly perturbation 24 , 25 ; it also operates in a large ensemble generated with another model commencing from different initial conditions 25 , 26 and across climate models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 27 , 28 . Thus, if the greenhouse-warming-induced increase in ENSO variability 29 is initially suppressed by internal variability, future ENSO variability is likely to be enhanced, and vice versa. This self-modulation linking ENSO variability across time presents a different perspective for understanding the dynamics of ENSO variability on multiple timescales in a changing climate. Modelling experiments show that the El Niño response to global warming is self-modulating and depends on its historical variability; if current variability is high, future variability will be low.