Precipitation anomalies around King Sejong Station, Antarctica associated with El Niño/Southern Oscillation

Abstract

Precipitation variability around King Sejong Station related with El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is evaluated using the gauge-based monthly data of its neighboring stations. Though three Antarctic Stations of King Sejong (Korea), Frei (Chile), and Artigas (Uruguay) are all closely located within 10 km, their precipitation data show mostly insignificant positive or rather negative correlations among them in the annual, seasonal and monthly precipitation. This result indicates that there are locally large variations in the distribution of precipitation around King Sejong Station. The monthly data of Frei Station for 31 years (1970-2000) are analyzed for examining the ENSO signal in precipitation because of its longer precipitation record compared to other two stations. From the analysis of seasonal precipitation, it is seen that there is a tendency of less precipitation than the average during El Nino events. This dryness is more distinct in fall to spring seasons, in which the precipitation decreases down to about 30 % of seasonal mean precipitation. However, the precipitation signal related with La Nina events is not significant. From the analysis of monthly precipitation, it is found that there is a strong negative correlation during 1980s and in the late 1990s, and a weak positive correlation in the early 1990s between normalized monthly precipitation at Frei Station and Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies in the NINO 3.4 region. However, this relation may be not applied over the region around King Sejong Station, but at only one station, Frei.