Abstract
Abstract. In recent years, many components of the connection between Eurasian autumn
snow cover and wintertime North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) have been
investigated, suggesting that November snow cover distribution has strong
prediction power for the upcoming Northern Hemisphere winter climate.
However, the non-stationarity of this relationship could impact its use for
prediction routines. Here we use snow products from long-term reanalyses to
investigate interannual and interdecadal links between autumnal snow cover
and atmospheric conditions in winter. We find evidence for a negative
NAO-like signal after November with a strong west-to-east snow cover
gradient, which is valid throughout the last 150 years. This correlation is consistently linked to a weak stratospheric polar vortex state. Nevertheless, decadal evolution of this link shows
episodes of decreased correlation strength, which co-occur with episodes of
low variability in the November snow index. By contrast, periods with
high prediction skill for winter NAO are found in periods of high November
snow variability, which co-occur with the Arctic warming periods of the
20th century, namely the early 20th-century Arctic warming between
1920 and 1940 and the ongoing anthropogenic global warming at the end of the
20th century. A strong snow dipole itself is consistently associated
with reduced Barents–Kara sea ice concentration, increased Ural blocking
frequency and negative temperature anomalies in eastern Eurasia.
Subject
General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Cited by
18 articles.
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