LAUSR

AbstractThe Walker circulation is linked to extratropical waves that are deflected from the Northern Hemisphere polar regions and travel southeastward over central Asia toward the western Pacific warm pool during northern winter. The wave pattern resembles the east Atlantic–west Russia pattern and influences the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) region. A tripole pattern between the West Siberian Plain and the two centers of action of ENSO indicates that the background state of ENSO with respect to global sea level pressure (SLP) has a significant negative correlation to the West Siberian Plain. The correlation with the background state, which is defined by the sum of the two centers of action of ENSO, is higher than each of the pairwise correlations with either of the ENSO centers alone. The centers are defined with a clustering algorithm that detects regions with similar characteristics. The normalized monthly SLP time series for the two centers of ENSO (around Darwin, Australia, and Tahiti) are area ...