The Internal Multidecadal Variability of SST in the Pacific and Its Impact on Air Temperature and Rainfall over Land in the Northern Hemisphere

Abstract

Based on the centennial-scale observations and re-analyses, this paper employs the ensemble empirical mode decomposition to separate the internal multidecadal variability (IMV) from the externally-forced variability of sea surface temperature (SST), and then defines new indices that represent the IMV of SST in the North Pacific (NPIMV) and South Pacific (SPIMV), respectively. The spatial structure of NPIMV/SPIMV shows remarkably positive SST anomaly only in the index-defined region; meanwhile, the temporal evolutions of NPIMV and SPIMV are uncorrelated, indicating their independence of each other. Both NPIMV and SPIMV play a critical role in the near-surface air temperature and rainfall over land in the Northern hemisphere, especially in the season when their intensity is the strongest. It is through teleconnection wave trains that NPIMV and SPIMV exert influences on remote regions. Results from another two rainfall datasets are found to be consistent in the majority of the Northern hemisphere in response to NPIMV/SPIMV, yet disagreement exists in certain regions due to large uncertainties of rainfall datasets.