资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The spring persistence barrier remains a critical challenge for the prediction of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) because it severely limits the potential ability of ENSO forecast across the boreal spring. Our observational analysis shows that the spring persistence barrier exhibited a significant decadal modulation in the last half century. Further analysis shows that this decadal modulation is caused by the decadal variation in spring ENSO stability, which, in turn, is dominated by the thermal damping feedback of the sea surface temperature (SST) through latent heat flux and shortwave radiation flux. The change of the thermal damping feedback is associated with the background mean SST, with a cooler SST corresponding to a greater ENSO instability and a severer spring persistence barrier and vice versa.