Impacts of Global Non-leading Teleconnection Signals on Terrestrial Precipitation across the United States

Identification of teleconnection patterns at a local scale is challenging, largely due to the coexistence of non-stationary and non-linear signals embedded within the ocean-atmosphere system. This study develops a method to overcome the problem of non-stationarity and nonlinearity and investigates how the non-leading teleconnection signals as well as the known teleconnection patterns can affect precipitation over three pristine sites in the United States. It is presented here that the oceanic indices which affect precipitation of specific site do not have commonality in different seasons. Results also found cases in which precipitation is significantly affected by the oceanic regions of two oceans within the same season. We attribute these cases to the combined physical oceanic-atmospheric processes caused by the coupled effects of oceanic regions. Interestingly, in some seasons, different regions in the South Pacific and Atlantic Oceans show more salient effects on precipitation compared to the known teleconnection patterns. Results highlight the importance of considering the seasonality scale and non-leading teleconnection signals in climate prediction.