North Atlantic atmospheric circulation indices: Links with summer and winter temperature and precipitation in north‐west Europe, including persistence and variability

Abstract

Variability in seasonal weather in north‐west Europe is substantially determined by jet stream variability. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has been well studied as a key representation of this jet stream variability, but other circulation indices are also important. Here the first three principal component empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) of 500 hPa geopotential height (GPH), which broadly correspond to the NAO, the East Atlantic pattern (EA) and Scandinavian pattern (SCA), as well as jet speed and latitude, are correlated with temperature and precipitation anomalies over Europe with a focus on north‐west Europe, as well as measures of persistence and variability. In high summer (July and August), all three of the principal EOFs are significantly correlated with extreme temperatures in large areas of northern Europe. In winter, for much of north‐west Europe, both temperatures and precipitation are positively correlated with the jet speed, and precipitation is negatively correlated with EOF3. There is some non‐stationarity in some of the relationships, notably between winter precipitation and EOF1, and between July/August precipitation and EOF2. In addition to single variate correlations, multiple correlation coefficients are also used to determine areas of significant correlation when combining two or three of the circulation indices. The multiple correlation analyses show that combining the three EOFs produces significant correlations with temperature and precipitation over much of Europe. These analyses provide scope for using seasonal forecasts to predict likely temperature and precipitation anomalies based on predicting the atmospheric circulation anomalies and downscaling them. Improved seasonal forecasts of temperature and precipitation, including persistence and variability, will be useful to a number of users, such as agrifood, transport, energy supply and insurance.

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