The Precipitation Response over the Continental United States to Cold Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperatures

Abstract

The dominant pattern of SST variability in the Pacific during its cold phase produces pronounced precipitation deficits over the continental United States throughout the annual cycle. This study investigates the observed physical and dynamical processes through which the cold Pacific pattern affects U.S. precipitation, particularly the causes for the peak dry impacts in fall, as well as the nature of the differences between the summer and fall responses. Results show that the peak precipitation deficit over the United States during fall is primarily due to reduced atmospheric moisture transport from the Gulf of Mexico into the central and eastern United States and secondarily a reduction in local evaporation from land–atmosphere feedback. The former is associated with a strong and systematic low-level northeasterly flow anomaly over the southeastern United States that counteracts the northwest branch of the climatological North Atlantic subtropical high. The above northeasterly anomaly is maintained by both diabatic heating anomalies in the nearby intra-American seas and diabatic cooling anomalies in the tropical Pacific. In contrast, the modest summertime precipitation deficit over the central United States is mainly an intensification of the local dry anomaly in the preceding spring from local land–atmosphere feedback; the rather weak and disorganized atmospheric circulation anomalies over and to the south of the United States make little contribution. An evaluation of the NASA Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction Project (NSIPP-1) AGCM simulations shows it to be deficient in simulating the warm season tropical convection responses over the intra-American seas to the cold Pacific pattern and thereby the precipitation responses over the United States, a problem that appears to be common to many AGCMs.