Bifurcation analysis of delay-induced resonances of the El-Niño Southern Oscillation

Models of global climate phenomena of low to intermediate complexity are very useful for providing an understanding at a conceptual level. An important aspect of such models is the presence of a number of feedback loops that feature considerable delay times, usually due to the time it takes to transport energy (for example, in the form of hot/cold air or water) around the globe. In this paper, we demonstrate how one can perform a bifurcation analysis of the behaviour of a periodically forced system with delay in dependence on key parameters. As an example, we consider the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is a sea-surface temperature (SST) oscillation on a multi-year scale in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. One can think of ENSO as being generated by an interplay between two feedback effects, one positive and one negative, which act only after some delay that is determined by the speed of transport of SST anomalies across the Pacific. We perform here a case study of a simple delayed-feedback oscillator model for ENSO, which is parametrically forced by annual variation. More specifically, we use numerical bifurcation analysis tools to explore directly regions of delay-induced resonances and other stability boundaries in this delay-differential equation model for ENSO.