Although ENSO knowledge has been expanding enormously during last few years, scientists have not yet developed joint and interdisciplinary efforts to better reconstruct and model multidecadal and centennial climate variability (MCEV). The long-term trends that have been reconstructed through numerous proxy variables have neither been analyzed nor modeled well enough to understand the mechanisms required for long-term forecasts.
The present trend towards more La Niña events, with more rainfall and tropical cyclones (as 2010 showed us) is highlighting the need to take into account different aspects of ENSO (such as multidecadal trends or ocean-atmosphere interactions) and merge the knowledge from proxy reconstructions, physical and mathematical simulations, non-linear climate analyses and socio-economical research to better understand, predict, and La Niña events, with more rainfall and tropical cyclones (as 2010 showed us) is highlighting the need to take into account different aspects of ENSO (such as multidecadal trends or ocean-atmosphere interactions) and merge the knowledge from proxy reconstructions, physical and mathematical simulations, non-linear climate analyses and socio-economical research to better understand, predict, and mitigate potential ENSO climate impacts in the future.
In order to discuss all these aspects, an international workshop on MCEV focusing on analysis, reconstruction and simulation of ENSO related climate oscillations was held in San Diego. The workshop drew more than 20 experts from Australia, Canada, Mexico, Spain, UK and the USA. The participants were mainly researchers from the fields of climate simulations and reconstructions or working on climate impacts and their related economical aspects. This workshop was a complementary meeting to the 10th International Conference on Paleoceanography (10th ICP) and was sponsored by the Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC-MEXUS) of the University of California.