Atmosphere-Land Bridge between the Pacific and Tropical North Atlantic SST's through the Amazon River basin during the 2005 and 2010 droughts

Alejandro Builes-Jaramillo; Antônio M T Ramos; Germán Poveda

doi:10.1063/1.5020502

Atmosphere-Land Bridge between the Pacific and Tropical North Atlantic SST's through the Amazon River basin during the 2005 and 2010 droughts

Chaos. 2018 Aug;28(8):085705. doi: 10.1063/1.5020502.

Authors

Alejandro Builes-Jaramillo¹, Antônio M T Ramos², Germán Poveda¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Geosciences and Environment, Facultad de Minas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín, Carrera 80 x Calle 65, 050041, Medellín, Colombia.
² National Institute for Space Research-INPE, 12227-010 São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil.

PMID: 30180604
DOI: 10.1063/1.5020502

Abstract

The present work uses a new approach to causal inference between complex systems called the Recurrence Measure of Conditional Dependence (RMCD) based on the recurrence plots theory, in order to study the role of the Amazon River basin (AM) as a land-atmosphere bridge between the Niño 3.0 region in the Pacific Ocean and the Tropical North Atlantic. Two anomalous droughts in the Amazon River basin were selected, one mainly attributed to the warming of the Tropical North Atlantic (2005) and the other to a warm phase of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (2010). The results of the RMCD analysis evidence the distinctive behavior in the causal information transferred between the two oceanic regions during the two extreme droughts, suggesting that the land-atmosphere bridge operating over the AM is an active hydroclimate mechanism at interannual timescales, and that the RMCD analysis may be an ancillary resort to complement early warning systems.