OBSERVED CLIMATIC VARIABILITY: SPATIAL STRUCTURE
JOHN M. WALLACE
University of Washington
Seattle, USA
Contents
1 Introduction
31
2 Background
32
2.1 Some dynamical considerations
32
2.2 Geometrical considerations ..
33
2.3 Considerations of data availability
34
3 How complex are the spatial patterns associated with climate variability?
37
4 Horizontal structure of extratropical climate variability
41
5 Impact of extratropical dynamical variability upon hemispheric-mean temperature
52
6 Structure of tropical climate variability
58
7 The ENSO signal in tropical-mean and global-mean temperature
67
8 ENSO-like interdecadal variability
70
9 Interpretation of the variability of global-mean temperature
73
10 Acknowledgments
75
1 Introduction
Atmospheric dynamicists and statisticians have been working more or less
independently, in an effort to make sense out of the structure and behaviour of the climate system. Dynamicists have tended to focus on variables such as geopotential height and wind, whereas statisticians have been
primarily concerned with long term trends in regionally, hemispheric ally
or globally averaged quantities such as surface air temperature. The dynamicists have confined their attention almost exclusively to wintertime
phenomena, whilst those working to document global temperature trends
NATO AS! Series, Vol.! 44
Decadal Climate Variability
Dynamics and Predictability
Edited by David L. T.Anderson and Jfirgen Willebrand
© Springer· Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1996