Abstract:Based on the latest monthly global reanalyzed NOAA(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) sea surface temperature(SST) and NCEP(National Centers for Environmental Prediction)/NCAR(National Center for Atmospheric Research) atmospheric circulation data,we analyzed the characteristics of the local air-sea processes for the 2015/2016 super El Niño event,and the differences with previous(1982/1983 and 1997/1998) super El Niño events are also discussed.The 2015/2016 super El Niño event can be regarded as the strongest on record,since the corresponding indices of El Niño duration,peak intensity and accumulated SST anomaly remain the strongest among the existing three super El Niño events.The location of the tropical SST anomaly was displaced further west compared with the 1982/1983 and 1997/1998 events.As a result,the SST of the 2015/2016 El Niño event was colder in the tropical eastern Pacific and warmer in the central Pacific than that of the previous two super El Niño events.Due to nonlinear responses of the convectional precipitation to the SST anomaly,precipitation anomalies were weaker in the tropical eastern Pacific and much stronger in the central Pacific during the 2015/2016 El Niño event than those during the previous two super El Niño events,which was particularly evident from the El Niño December to the following April.Moreover,the 1982/1983 and 1997/1998 super El Niño events exhibited obvious southward shifts of the atmospheric responses from the equator to 5°S in the tropical central Pacific during the mature-to-decay phase.However,the precipitation and the westerly wind anomalies during the same phase of the 2015/2016 event were mainly located near the equator and the meridional movements were not as robust as those during the 1982/1983 and 1997/1998 events.The intensities of the ENSO combination mode,which results from the interaction between ENSO and the annual cycle,were also weaker during the 2015/2016 event than those during the previous two super El Niño events,and so was the anomalous western North Pacific anticyclone.Further analyses reveal that these particular phenomena in the 2015/2016 super El Niño were the consequence of the westward shift of the SST anomaly in the tropical central Pacific from winter 2015 to spring 2016.The relatively cold climatological SST north of the equator increased and exceeded the convection threshold,which favored the convection activities both south and north of the equator and led to the weakened meridional movement of the atmospheric responses.