Quantitative Estimation of the Impact of European Teleconnections on Interannual Variation of East Asian Winter Temperature and Monsoon

Abstract

The impact of European teleconnections including the East AtlanticWest Russia (EA-WR), the Scandinavia (SCA), and the East Atlantic (EA) on East Asian winter temperature variability was quantified and compared with the combined effect of the Arctic Oscillation (AO), the Western Pacific (WP), and the El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which are originated in the Northern Hemispheric high-latitudes or the Pacific. Three European teleconnections explained 22-25 percent of the total monthly upper-tropospheric height variance over Eurasia. Regression analysis revealed warming by EA-WR and EA and cooling by SCA over mid-latitude East Asia during their positive phase and vice versa. Temperature anomalies were largely explained by the advective temperature change process at the lower troposphere. The average spatial correlation over East Asia (90-180E, 10-80N) for the last 34 winters between observed and reconstructed temperature comprised of AO, WP and ENSO effect (AWE) was approximately 0.55, and adding the European teleconnection components (ESE) to the reconstructed temperature improved the correlation up to approximately 0.64. Lower level atmospheric structure demonstrated that approximately five of the last 34 winters were significantly better explained by ESE than AWE to determine East Asian seasonal winter temperatures. We also compared the impact between EA-WR and AO on the 1) East Asian winter monsoon, 2) cold surge, and 3) the Siberian high. These three were strongly coupled, and their spatial features and interannual variation were somewhat better explained by EA-WR than AO. Results suggest that the EA-WR impact must be treated more importantly than previously thought for a better understanding of East Asian winter temperature and monsoon variability