DOI: 10.5061/dryad.c59zw3rh1
title: Data from: Coupling is key for the tropical Indian and Atlantic Oceans to boost super El Niño

description: The influences of the tropical Indian and Atlantic Oceans on the
 development of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), especially regarding
 super El Niño events, have been a subject of debate. In particular,
 several studies argue that these cross-basin influences may be mere
 statistical artifacts resulting from the high auto-correlation of ENSO. To
 clarify this issue, we conduct a series of perfect model hindcast
 experiments to untangle the individual and synergistic effects of the
 Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Our results clearly demonstrate that without
 these cross-basin effects, the Pacific warming would rarely reach super El
 Niño level. Specifically, the individual effect of the Indian Ocean
 efficiently enhances the development of super El Niño events. In contrast,
 the Atlantic effect is initially limited because it fails to establish the
 Bjerknes feedback in the Pacific. However, when coupled with the Indian
 Ocean, the Atlantic’s effect becomes more pronounced as it is amplified by
 the Bjerknes feedback established by the Indian Ocean.
description: This dataset is the post-processed CESM model outputs of the CTRL
 and partial-decoupled experiments. All the results were processed by the
 NCAR Command Language (NCL).
description: # Model simulation dataset of "Coupling is Key for the Tropical
 Indian and Atlantic Oceans to Boost Super El Niño"
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c59zw3rh1](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c59zw3rh1) This dataset contains the post-processed model data generated from four CESM experiments (the CTRL and three partial-decoupled experiments) as presented in the paper titled “Coupling is Key for the Tropical Indian and Atlantic Oceans to Boost Super El Niño.” The data provided here serves as a reference for further research and analysis. The files of this dataset were processed using the NCAR Command Language (NCL). ## Description of the data and file structure (1) “Fig1_3basins_indices.nc”: This file includes data related to key climate indices, namely the Niño3.4 index, Indian Dipole Mode index (DMI), Indian Basin-wide Mode index (BWI), and Atl3 index. The data comprises observations and a 100-year free-integrated model simulation, as illustrated in Fig. 1 of the paper. (2) “Fig2_hov_SST_anom.nc”,  “Fig2_hov_Usf_anom.nc”, & “Fig2_Nino34.nc”: The first two files present the equatorial (5°S to 5°N) mean sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and surface wind anomalies for both the CTRL and the three partial-decoupled experiments (dIO, dAtl, dInA). The associated visualizations can be found in Figs. 2A, 2C, 2E, and 2G. Additionally, “Fig2_Nino34.nc” contains the monthly Niño3.4 index data for all four experiments in Figs. 2B, 2D, 2F, and 2H. (3) “Fig3_Nino34_diff.nc”: This file contains the differences in monthly Niño3.4 index between selected pairs of experiments, illustrating the individual and synergistic impacts of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans as shown in Fig. 3. (4) “Fig4_Usf_Nino4.nc”, “Fig4_SSTa_diff.nc”, & “Fig4_UVELa_diff.nc”: These files detail the individual and synergistic effects of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans on the Niño4-mean surface zonal winds, equatorial mean SST, and surface zonal ocean currents, respectively. The corresponding results are depicted in Fig. 4.