Observed decadal tropical Pacific-North Atlantic teleconnections

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Muller, W. A., Frankignoul, Claude, Chouaib, Nadine
• Other Authors: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques (LOCEAN), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace (IPSL (FR_636)), École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 (UPD7)-École polytechnique (X)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 (UPD7)-École polytechnique (X)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2008
• Subjects: [SDU.STU.GP]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Geophysics [physics.geo-ph]; [SDU.STU.OC]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Oceanography; aleutian low; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00365183; https://hal.science/hal-00365183/document; https://hal.science/hal-00365183/file/2008GL035901.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1029/2008GL035901

International audience Observations of the last century are considered to investigate the decadal scale Pacific/North Atlantic teleconnections. By using wavelet analysis we find a significant low-frequency coherency between major indices of climate variability. In particular, at periods between 10 and 20 yr, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) tends to be out of phase with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (strong Icelandic low during La Niña) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), but in phase with the North Pacific Index (NPI). Hence, the Icelandic low is strong during La Niña, but the Aleutian low is weak. The band-pass SST pattern shows a close relationship between the "decadal-ENSO" mode in the Pacific and the sea surface temperature anomaly tripole in the Atlantic, consistent with the low-frequency global teleconnections. The spatial sea level patterns corresponding to the band-pass filtered indices suggest that the Aleutian-Icelandic Low seesaw is a main interbasin link on decadal time scale, consistent with the larger coherency of the NPI with the NAO than with ENSO.