Climatic variability in the Andes of Ecuador and its relation to tropical Pacific and Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies

• Main Authors: Mathias Vuille, Raymond S. Bradley, Frank Keimig
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.693.1183; http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/vuille2000c.pdf

The main spatiotemporal modes of seasonal precipitation and temperature variability in the Andes of Ecuador (18N–48S) and their relation to tropical Pacific and Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) between 1963–92 are identified based on rotated principal component analysis and cross-correlation techniques. Outgoing longwave radiation composites are analyzed during periods of strong oceanic forcing to confirm the proposed physical mechanisms. Despite the close proximity to the Pacific, precipitation variability in the Andes of Ecuador is not related to SSTA in the tropical Pacific domain alone. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation influence is most dominant in the northwestern part of the Andes during December–February (DJF) and in the eastern Cordillera during June–August (JJA) and in both cases associated with below- (above-) average precipitation during El Niño (La Niña) years. During most of the year precipitation variability over the eastern Andes is related to a dipolelike correlation structure in the tropical Atlantic, featuring positive correlations with SSTA to the south of the ITCZ and negative correlations to the north. The proposed mechanism involves positive SSTA in the tropical South Atlantic and contemporaneous negative SSTA in the tropical North Atlantic, resulting in increased rainfall over the eastern Cordillera. The only region with slightly increased precipitation during El Niño events is confined to a narrow area along the western Andean slope between 18 and 38S in close proximity to the