Search results for "Teleconnection"
showing 8 items of 38 documents
The East African March–May Rainy Season: Associated Atmospheric Dynamics and Predictability over the 1968–97 Period
2002
Abstract This paper focuses on the East African March–May “long rains.” Particularly, it investigates the atmospheric patterns associated to the March–May rainfall anomalies, then proposes a seasonal prediction model. In a preliminary step, in order to define a regional rainfall index, a new form of extended principal component analysis is performed, aimed at capturing both the spatial and intraseasonal rainfall coherence. What emerges is that although the long rains exhibit a low temporal coherence, calling for a separation between the months of March–April and May in teleconnection studies, they show a relatively strong spatial consistency over the Kenya–Uganda inland region. From composi…
Interannual variability of rainfall in the eastern horn of Africa and indicators of atmospheric circulation
1993
Relationships between rainfall variations in the Eastern Horn of Africa, the Southern Oscillation, and the Indian Ocean temperature and pressure surface fields are studied for the period 1932–83. Rainfall data consist of stations and regional indices calculated for three selected areas experiencing quite different rainfall patterns. The results indicate significant negative correlations between northern autumn rains in Somalia and the Southern Oscillation during the same season. These rains are also negatively correlated with pressure in the Western Indian Ocean, and positively correlated in the Eastern Indian Ocean. The reverse pattern is shown with sea-surface temperature. This agrees ver…
Comparison of rainfall structures between NCEP/NCAR reanalyses and observed data over tropical Africa
2000
A comparison is made between modelled (NCEP/NCAR reanalysis) and observed (CRC and CRU dataset) annual and monthly precipitation over tropical Africa during the period 1958–1997. The split moving-windows dissimilarity analysis (SMWDA) is used to locate abrupt changes in rainfall time series. In the NCEP reanalysis data, we identify a main abrupt shift, which occurs in 1967 and concerns more than 50% of grid points. In the observation, this shift is only found over parts of tropical North Africa. Three other NCEP abrupt shifts (1975, 1983 and 1987) in the reanalysis shown by the SMWDA, each concerning about 20% of tropical Africa, are not identified in the observation. One hypothesis concern…
Timing and patterns of ENSO impacts in Africa over the last 30 years: insights from Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data.
2012
International audience; In this study we reassess and provide a more complete picture of the timing and patterns of ENSO impacts for the whole of Africa over the three last decades. We analyse the vegetation photosynthetic activity estimated by the NOAA-AVHRR Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) rather than rainfall itself, because NDVI allows us to document the impacts at fine space and time scales. The use of the monthly time-step adds important new insights to the findings of previous works based largely on annual or seasonal time-scales and on a regional spatial-scale: several dipolar and propagative patterns are highlighted. In addition, we show that the less-studied winter ra…
Variabilité intra-saisonnière et multi-décennale de la téléconnexion entre les pressions de surface (100°W–50°E ; 30°–70°N) et les ENSO/LNSO (1873–19…
2000
Abstract The relationships between an index of the NINO3.4 region and the wintertime sea level pressure (hereafter SLP) anomalies on the extratropical North Atlantic and the bordering areas (100°W–50°E; 30°–70°N) are studied for 1873–1996. This study emphasizes the need of a careful pooling of months and the multi-decadal variability of the ENSO/LNSO influence on the extratropical North Atlantic. We calculate the mean monthly climate anomalies for the 20 warmest and the 20 coldest NINO3.4 (170°–120°W; 5°N–5°S) years from October to March. The composite of SLP anomalies for the 20 warmest NINO3.4 years shows an anomalous trough centered near 30°W in November–December, and positive (respectiv…
Climate signatures on decadal to interdecadal time scales as obtained from mollusk shells (Arctica islandica) from Iceland
2013
Abstract Pronounced decadal climate oscillations are detected in a multi-centennial record based on shell growth rates of the marine bivalve mollusk, Arctica islandica, from Iceland. The corresponding analysis of patterns in sea level pressure and temperature exhibit large-scale teleconnections with North Atlantic climate quantities. We find that the record projects onto blocking situations in the northern North Atlantic. The associated circulation shows a low-pressure signature over Greenland and the Labrador Sea and a high-pressure system over Western Europe associated with northeasterly flow towards Iceland and weakening in the westerly zonal flow over Europe. It can be speculated that s…
El Niño in the Eocene greenhouse recorded by fossil bivalves and wood from Antarctica
2011
[1] Quasi-periodic variation in sea-surface temperature, precipitation, and sea-level pressure in the equatorial Pacific known as the El Nino – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an important mode of interannual variability in global climate. A collapse of the tropical Pacific onto a state resembling a so-called ‘permanent El Nino’, with a preferentially warmed eastern equatorial Pacific, flatter thermocline, and reduced interannual variability, in a warmer world is predicted by prevailing ENSO theory. If correct, future warming will be accompanied by a shift toward persistent conditions resembling El Nino years today, with major implications for global hydrological cycles and consequent impact…
Millennial-scale climate variability during the last 12.5 ka recorded in a Caribbean speleothem
2013
Abstract We present a speleothem stable oxygen isotope record for the last 12.5 ka based on two stalagmites from western Cuba. The δ18O signal is interpreted to represent past precipitation variability. Both stalagmites show a pronounced transition from higher δ18O values (indicating drier conditions) to more negative δ18O values (suggesting wetter conditions) between 10 and 6 ka. This transition is also visible in a planktonic δ18O record off Haiti. On orbital timescales, the δ18O value of Caribbean precipitation, thus, strongly resembles the oxygen isotope composition of Caribbean surface water. On millenial timescales, the speleothem δ18O record shows a high correlation to a North Atlant…