Advances in Atmospheric Sciences

, Volume 32, Issue 5, pp 671–679 | Cite as

Exploring the phase-strength asymmetry of the North Atlantic Oscillation using conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation

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Abstract

Negative-phase North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) events are generally stronger than positive-phase ones, i.e., there is a phase-strength asymmetry of the NAO. In this work, we explore this asymmetry of the NAO using the conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation (CNOP) method with a three-level global quasi-geostrophic spectral model. It is shown that, with winter climatological flow forcing, the CNOP method identifies the perturbations triggering the strongest NAO event under a given initial constraint. Meanwhile, the phase-strength asymmetry characteristics of the NAO can be revealed. By comparing with linear results, we find that the process of perturbation self-interaction promotes the onset of negative NAO events, which is much stronger than during positive NAO onset. Results are obtained separately using the climatological and zonal-mean flows in boreal winter (December–February) 1979–2006 as the initial basic state. We conclude, based on the fact that NAO onset is a nonlinear initial-value problem, that phase-strength asymmetry is an intrinsic characteristic of the NAO.

Key words

North Atlantic Oscillation asymmetry optimization problem 
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Copyright information

© Chinese National Committee for International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Science Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.State Key Laboratory of Severe WeatherChinese Academy of Meteorological SciencesBeijingChina
  2. 2.State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of OceanologyChinese Academy of SciencesGuangzhouChina

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