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Nonlinear Patterns of North American Winter Temperature and Precipitation Associated with ENSO.

American Meteorological Society

Nonlinear projections of the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) onto North American winter (November–March) surface air temperature (SAT) and precipitation anomalies have been performed using neural networks. During El Niño, the linear SAT response has positive anomalies centered over Alaska and western Canada opposing weaker negative anomalies centered over the southeastern United States. In contrast, the nonlinear SAT response, which is excited during both strong El Niño and strong La Niña, has negative anomalies centered over Alaska and northwestern Canada and positive anomalies over much of the United States and southern Canada. For precipitation, the linear response during El Niño has a positive anomaly area stretching from the east coast to the southwest coast of the United States and another positive area in northern Canada, in opposition to the negative anomaly area over much of southern Canada and northern United States, and another negative area over Alaska. In contrast, the nonlinear precipitation response, which is excited during both strong El Niño and strong La Niña, displays positive anomalies over much of the United States and southern Canada, with the main center on the west coast at around 45°N and a weak center along the southeast coast, and negative anomalies over northwestern Canada and Alaska. The nonlinear response accounts for about one-fourth and one-third as much variance as the linear response of the SAT and precipitation, respectively. A polynomial fit further verifies the nonlinear response of both the SAT and precipitation to be mainly a quadratic response to ENSO. Both the linear and nonlinear response patterns of the SAT and precipitation are basically consistent with the circulation anomalies (the 500-mb geopotential height anomalies), detected separately by nonlinear projection. A cross-validation test shows that including the nonlinear (quadratic) response can potentially contribute to additional forecast skill over North America. Copyright 2005 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org.

Text

2016-11-10

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/33329

Wu, Aiming, Hsieh, William W., Shabbar, Amir. 2005. Nonlinear Patterns of North American Winter Temperature and Precipitation Associated with ENSO. Journal of Climate. 18(11) 1736-1752.

Reviewed

Hsieh, William W.

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