North Atlantic Oscillation Dynamics Recorded in Greenland Ice Cores

Carefully selected ice core data from Greenland can be used to reconstruct an annual proxy North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) index. This index for the past 350 years indicates that the NAO is an intermittent climate oscillation with temporally active (coherent) and passive (incoherent) phases. No ind...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Appenzeller, C., Stocker, T. F., Anklin, M.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 1998
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Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.282.5388.446
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.282.5388.446
Description
Summary:Carefully selected ice core data from Greenland can be used to reconstruct an annual proxy North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) index. This index for the past 350 years indicates that the NAO is an intermittent climate oscillation with temporally active (coherent) and passive (incoherent) phases. No indication for a single, persistent, multiannual NAO frequency is found. In active phases, most of the energy is located in the frequency band with periods less than about 15 years. In addition, variability on time scales of 80 to 90 years has been observed since the mid-19th century.