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The tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans are known to modulate year-to-year rainfall variability over South America, causing extreme climatic conditions such as floods and multi-year droughts. In this volume, we welcomed studies considering the South American climatic impacts associated with Pacific and Atlantic variability. The studies in this special collection highlight climatic impacts varying from continental to local scales and multi-decadal to sub-daily time ranges. Local scale impact is analysed in the case of an extreme precipitation event (244.5 mm in 24 h) recorded in the Emeraldas River basin, northwestern coast of Ecuador, on 24-25 January 2016 (
Strong El Niño, such as the 2015-2016 event, is only one of the diverse types of El Niño that affect South America. It is now recognised that distinct types of El Niño influence regional climate in different ways. While Eastern Pacific El Niño is associated with stronger and well-defined positive precipitation anomaly in southeastern South America, Central Pacific El Niño shows weaker and even an opposite signal over the region, and Mixed El Niño events present a spatial pattern of precipitation anomalies similar to eastern events but with lower intensity (
The interannual impacts of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation on South America are modulated by interdecadal climate variability in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Interdecadal variations of sea surface temperature over the central-west equatorial Pacific have a stronger influence on rainfall over central Andes compared to those from the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (
Not only do those atmospheric teleconnections vary on inter-decadal timescales, but they may also be influenced by regime shifts, for example the one identified in the North Pacific sea surface temperature by
The studies presented in this volume offer valuable insights into the diverse scale variations of South American climate that are influenced by the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. However, some important aspects remain unclear and may be explored in further research. These include the impacts related to variability of the Indian Ocean and other climate drivers such as the Southern Annular Mode, as well as changes in future teleconnections and associated impacts occurring under increased greenhouse warming, along with corresponding uncertainties. We hope you enjoy the content published in this volume.
MS: Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. AT: Writing–review and editing. ED: Writing–review and editing.
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. AT is supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CE170100023) and Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program (NESP).
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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