A Stratospheric Northern Annular Mode (SNAM) phase-based composite analysis reveals that continental Cold Air Outbreaks (CAOs) can occur during both positive and negative SNAM events. CAOs tend to occur over Asia, characterized by a meridional-dipole surface temperature anomaly pattern (cold midlatitudes and warm high-latitudes) when the SNAM index is decreasing or the stratospheric polar vortex is weakening, but over North Am...

The Western Tibetan Vortex (WTV) is a large-scale circulation pattern identified from year-to-year circulation variability, which was used to understand the causal mechanisms for slowdown of the glacier melting over the western Tibetan Plateau (TP). A recent argument has suggested the WTV is the set of wind field anomalies resulting from variability in near-surface air temperatures over the western TP (above 1500 m), which, in...

The South Asian circulation and precipitation in spring shows a clear seasonal transition and interannual variation. We investigate how the North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) and Tibetan Plateau (TP) forcing affect this seasonal transition over South Asia on interannual timescale. Our results suggest that North Atlantic SST can affect the seasonal transition of South Asian monsoon via TP forcing in spring. The positi...