Review of Progress of ENSO Studies in the Past Three Decades

As the strongest signal of the interannual climate variability, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has attracted great attention. ENSO not only plays an important role in the droughts and floods over China, and in the anomaly of Asian monsoon, but also exerts a great impact on the global climate anomalies. The paper provides a review of ENSO research in the past 30 years, mainly in the following seven aspects: ENSO dynamical theory, ENSO prediction methods, interdecadal variations of ENSO, classification of ENSO type, monitoring indices of ENSO, the possible climate impacts by ENSO and the status of current ENSO operations. Recent studies of different distribution types of ENSO have also been summarized in great detail. Moreover, the paper discussed potential further studies in several topics, such as the monitoring indices of different distribution types of ENSO and their climate impacts.