Pacific SST Variability : Structure and Evolution Bin Guan & Sumant Nigam Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science University of Maryland, College Park 11 th Annual CCSM Workshop, Breckenridge, CO; June, 2006
Pacific SST Analyses Deser & Blackmon 1995 Zhang et al Mantua et al Nakamura et al Nigam et al Barlow et al Wu et al …And others
Analysis Issues Short records Data pre-filtering, de-trending Regional analysis domain Single season analysis Spatial pattern recurrence is targeted Techniques vary (corr/covar; rot/unrot)
GOAL Obtain a robust characterization of all non-seasonal modes of Pacific SST (ocean-atmosphere) variability from a single analysis of unfiltered data.
Extended EOF Analysis Targets both spatial and temporal recurrence No temporal periodicities are imposed EEOF differs from EOF only in anomaly definition: EOF: ψ(x,y,t o ) EEOF: […,ψ(x,y,t o -Δt), ψ(x,y,t o ), ψ(x,y,t o +Δt),…] Δt was chosen to be a season Temporal recurrence analyzed with a 1-year window (5 staggered data bands) Hadley SSTs analyzed; all-season analysis Analysis domain: Pan Pacific (120E-60W; 20S-60N) EEOFs are rotated
ENSO − (REEOF2; 13.6%)ENSO + (REEOF1; 17.7%) ENSO
ENSO PCs (PC1&2)
Trend mode (REEOF3; 10.2%)Linear trend Trend
1951—2002 precipitation (CRUTS2.1) mm day -1 Trend Mode’s Regressions on African/Asian Precipitation mm day -1
PDV Pan-Pacific (REEOF4; 5.3%)PDV North Pacific (REEOF6; 4.3%) Pacific Decadal Variability (PDV)
PDV Pan-Pacific (PC4)
PDV North Pacific (PC6)
Summary Analysis features - Pan-Pacific analysis domain - all seasons included - unfiltered data - rotated extended EOF - sensitivity tests (domain/period analyzed, number of EEOFs rotated, etc.) ENSO, PDV, trend (and other modes of interest) simultaneously extracted Two modes relevant to PDV: Pan-Pacific, North Pacific
Future Plans Analysis of subsurface data; PDV mechanisms Attribution of 20 th century climate anomalies (e.g., the Dust Bowl drought) to the various low-frequency modes Model intercomparisons: how are the modes and their impacts on climate represented in coupled models?
Biennial (REEOF7; 3.5%)Non-canonical ENSO? (REEOF5; 4.3%) Appendix