Identification of the Eurasian–North Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation and Its Relationship to the AMO

Abstract

Abstract A multidecadal geopotential height pattern in the upper troposphere of the extratropical Northern Hemisphere (NH) is identified in this study. This pattern is characterized by the nearly zonal symmetry of geopotential height and temperature between 35° and 65°N and the equivalent barotropic vertical structure with the largest amplitude in the upper troposphere. This pattern is named the Eurasian–Pacific multidecadal oscillation (EAPMO) to describe its multidecadal time scale and the largest amplitudes over Eurasia and the North Pacific. Although nearly extending over the entire extratropics, the EAPMO exhibits larger amplitudes over western Europe, East Asia, and the North Pacific with a zonal scale equivalent to zonal wavenumbers 4 and 5. The zonally asymmetric perturbation tends to amplify over the major mountain ranges in the region, suggesting a significant topographic influence. The EAPMO has fluctuated concurrently with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) at least since the beginning of the twentieth century. The numerical simulation results suggest that the EAPMO could be induced by the AMO-like sea surface temperature anomaly and strengthened regionally by topography, especially over the Asian highland region, although the amplitude was undersimulated. This study found that the multidecadal variability of the upper-tropospheric geopotential height in the extratropical NH is much more complicated than in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere (SH). It takes both first (warming trend) and second (multidecadal) EOFs to explain the multidecadal variability in the extratropical NH, while only the first EOF, which exhibited a warming trend, is sufficient for the tropics and SH.