Intraseasonal Oscillations in the Global Atmosphere. Part I: Northern Hemisphere and Tropics

Abstract

We have examined systematically oscillatory modes in the Northern Hemisphere and in the tropics. The 700 mb heights were used to analyze extratropical oscillations, and the outgoing longwave radiation to study tropical oscillations in convection. All datasets were band-pass filtered to focus on the intraseasonal (IS) band of 10–120 days. Leading spatial patterns of variability were obtained by applying EOF analysis to these IS data. The leading principal components (PCs) were subjected to singular spectrum analysis (SSA). SSA is a statistical technique related to EOF analysis, but in the time domain, rather than the spatial domain. It helps identify nonlinear oscillations in short and noisy time series. In the Northern Hemisphere, there are two important modes of oscillation with periods near 48 and 23 days, respectively. The 48-day mode is the most important of the two. It has both traveling and standing components, and is dominated by a zonal wavenumber two. The 23-day mode has the spatial structure and propagation properties described by Branstator and by Kushnir. In the tropics, the 40–50 day oscillation documented by Madden and Julian, Weickmann, Lau, their colleagues, and many other authors dominates the Indian and Pacific oceans from 60°E to the date line. From 170°W to 90°W, however, a 24–28 day oscillation is equally strong. The extratropical modes are often independent of, and sometimes lead, the tropical modes.