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The impact of combined ENSO and PDO on the PNA climate: a 1,000-year climate modeling study

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Abstract

This study analyzes the atmospheric response to the combined Pacific interannual ENSO and decadal–interdecadal PDO variability, with a focus on the Pacific-North American (PNA) sector, using a 1,000-year long integration of the Canadian Center for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) coupled climate model. Both the tropospheric circulation and the North American temperature suggest an enhanced PNA-like climate response and impacts on North America when ENSO and PDO variability are in phase. The anomalies of the centers of action for the PNA-like pattern are significantly different from zero and the anomaly pattern is field significant. In association with the stationary wave anomalies, large stationary wave activity fluxes appear in the mid-high latitudes originating from the North Pacific and flowing downstream toward North America. There are significant Rossby wave source anomalies in the extratropical North Pacific and in the subtropical North Pacific. In addition, the axis of the Pacific storm track shifts southward with the positive PNA. Atmospheric heating anomalies associated with ENSO variability are confined primarily to the tropics. There is an anomalous heating center over the northeast Pacific, together with anomalies with the same polarity in the tropical Pacific, for the PDO variability. The in-phase combination of ENSO and PDO would in turn provide anomalous atmospheric energy transports towards North America from both the Tropical Pacific and the North Pacific, which tends to favor the occurrence of stationary wave anomalies and would lead to a PNA-like wave anomaly structure. The modeling results also confirm our analysis based on the observational record in the twentieth century.

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Acknowledgments

We greatly appreciate the work of G. J. Boer, G. M. Flato, D. Ramsden, C. Reader, W. Lee, and other colleagues in the production of the model results analyzed here. B. Yu is also indebted to X. L. Wang for discussion on the field significant test and to X. Zhang for his help in editing the figures. We thank S. Kharin, X. L. Wang, Q. Teng, and two anonymous reviewers and the editor (E. Schneider) for helpful suggestions and comments on this study.

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  1. Climate Data and Analysis Section, Climate Research Division, Environment Canada, 4905 Dufferin Street, Toronto, M3H 5T4, ON, Canada

    B. Yu

  2. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Climate Research Division, Environment Canada, Victoria, Canada

    F. W. Zwiers

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  1. B. Yu
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Correspondence to B. Yu.

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Yu, B., Zwiers, F.W. The impact of combined ENSO and PDO on the PNA climate: a 1,000-year climate modeling study. Clim Dyn 29, 837–851 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-007-0267-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-007-0267-4

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