The relationship between ENSO events and sea surface temperature in the East (Japan) Sea

A relationship between ENSO events and variation of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) in the East Sea (Japan Sea) has been investigated using SST data com piled by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) with 1 degrees x1 degrees re solution during 1950 to 1998. ENSO index used here, is SST in the tropical Pacific Ocean. The results of the SST data analysis show that the variation of SST anomaly (SSTA) in the East Sea is closely related to ENSO events wi th the following features: 1) The summer in the year in which El Nino event s develop (year 0) tends to be colder than in the year prior to the develop ment of the El Nino events (year - 1), i.e. 'cold summer', whereas the wint er tends to be 'warm winter'; 2) The states in year 0 during La Nina events are opposite to those during El Nino events. A statistical correlation ana lysis supports the above results. EOF analysis of SST indicates that the fi rst mode explains more than 90% of the SST variation. This paper shows that variation of SSTA in the East Sea occurs simultaneously with the developme nt of ENSO events in the tropical Pacific Ocean. (C) 2001 Published by Else vier Science Ltd.