title: El nino chaos: overlapping of resonances between the seasonal cycle and the pacific ocean-atmosphere oscillator.
abstract: The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle is modeled as a low-order chaotic process driven by the seasonal cycle. A simple model suggests that the equatorial Pacific ocean-atmosphere oscillator can go into nonlinear resonance with the seasonal cycle and that with strong enough coupling between the ocean and the atmosphere, the system may become chaotic as a result of irregular jumping of the ocean-atmosphere system among different nonlinear resonances. An analysis of a time series from an ENSO prediction model is consistent with the low-order chaos mechanism.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tziperman
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Stone
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Cane
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jarosh