Geophysical Research Letters

• Main Authors: Di Lorenzo E, N. Schneider, K. M. Cobb, J. C. Furtado, A. Alex, B. Anderson, Emanuele Di Lorenzo
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pacific; aleutian low
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.174.3958; http://ocean.eas.gatech.edu/manu/papers/PDFs/DiLorenzo_Schneider2009.pdf

We show that decadal dynamics of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO) are linked through their relationships to ENSO. The PDO and NPGO are first order autoregressive responses of the ocean to the two dominant modes of North Pacific atmospheric variability-- the Aleutian Low (AL) and the North Pacific Oscillation (NPO), respectively. The links between the PDO/AL and NPGO/NPO are found by computing the ocean/atmosphere covariability modes in the Pacific sector [40S-62N]. The first co-variability mode captures the mature phase of ENSO and its atmospheric teleconnections to the AL, while the second co-variability mode captures the NPO, which leads the ENSO mode by ~8-12 months. We synthesize these results with previous studies to suggest a framework for quasi-deterministic decadal oscillations of Pacific climate. 2