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Characterizing ENSO Coupled Variability and Its Impact on North American Seasonal Precipitation and Temperature

Michelle L. L’Heureux National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Weather Service/National Centers for Environmental Prediction, Climate Prediction Center, College Park, Maryland

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Michael K. Tippett Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, New York, and Center of Excellence for Climate Change Research, Department of Meteorology, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

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Anthony G. Barnston International Research Institute for Climate and Society, The Earth Institute of Columbia University, Palisades, New York

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Print Publication:
01 May 2015
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00508.1
Page(s):
4231–4245
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Abstract

Two questions are addressed in this paper: whether ENSO can be adequately characterized by simple, seasonally invariant indices and whether the time series of a single component—SST or OLR—provides a sufficiently complete representation of ENSO for the purpose of quantifying U.S. climate impacts. Here, ENSO is defined as the leading mode of seasonally varying canonical correlation analysis (CCA) between anomalies of tropical Pacific SST and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). The CCA reveals that the strongest regions of coupling are mostly invariant as a function of season and correspond to an OLR region located in the central Pacific Ocean (CP-OLR) and an SST region in the eastern Pacific that coincides with the Niño-3 region. In a linear context, the authors explore whether the use of a combined index of these SST and OLR regions explains additional variance of North American temperature and precipitation anomalies beyond that described by using a single index alone. Certain seasons and regions benefit from the use of a combined index. In particular, a combined index describes more variability in winter/spring precipitation and summer temperature.

Supplemental information related to this paper is available at the Journals Online website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00508.s1.

Corresponding author address: Michelle L’Heureux, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration/Climate Prediction Center, 5830 University Research Court, Rm. 3115, W/NP52, College Park, MD 20740. E-mail: michelle.lheureux@noaa.gov

A comment/reply has been published regarding this article and can be found at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0678.1 and http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0080.1

Abstract

Two questions are addressed in this paper: whether ENSO can be adequately characterized by simple, seasonally invariant indices and whether the time series of a single component—SST or OLR—provides a sufficiently complete representation of ENSO for the purpose of quantifying U.S. climate impacts. Here, ENSO is defined as the leading mode of seasonally varying canonical correlation analysis (CCA) between anomalies of tropical Pacific SST and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). The CCA reveals that the strongest regions of coupling are mostly invariant as a function of season and correspond to an OLR region located in the central Pacific Ocean (CP-OLR) and an SST region in the eastern Pacific that coincides with the Niño-3 region. In a linear context, the authors explore whether the use of a combined index of these SST and OLR regions explains additional variance of North American temperature and precipitation anomalies beyond that described by using a single index alone. Certain seasons and regions benefit from the use of a combined index. In particular, a combined index describes more variability in winter/spring precipitation and summer temperature.

Supplemental information related to this paper is available at the Journals Online website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00508.s1.

Corresponding author address: Michelle L’Heureux, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration/Climate Prediction Center, 5830 University Research Court, Rm. 3115, W/NP52, College Park, MD 20740. E-mail: michelle.lheureux@noaa.gov

A comment/reply has been published regarding this article and can be found at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0678.1 and http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0080.1

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