A summer teleconnection pattern over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere and associated mechanisms

Using monthly data from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast 40-year reanalysis (ERA-40), we have revealed a teleconnection pattern over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere through the empirical orthogonal function analysis of summer upper-tropospheric eddy temperature. When temperature is higher (lower) over the Eastern Hemisphere (EH), it is lower (higher) over the Western Hemisphere (WH). The teleconnection manifested by this out-of-phase relationship is referred to as the Asian–Pacific oscillation (APO). The values of an index measuring the teleconnection are high before 1976 and low afterwards, showing a downward trend of the stationary wave at a rate of 4% per year during 1958–2001. The index also exhibits apparent interannual variations. When the APO index is high, anomalous upper-tropospheric highs (lows) appear over EH (WH). The formation of APO is likely associated with a zonal vertical circulation in the troposphere. Unforced control runs of both the NCAR Community Atmospheric Model version 3 and the Community Climate System Model version 3 capture the major characteristics of the teleconnection pattern and its associated vertical structure. The APO variability is closely associated with sea surface temperature (SST) in the Pacific, with a significantly positive correlation between APO and SST in the extratropical North Pacific and a significantly negative correlation in the tropical eastern Pacific. Sensitivity experiments show that the anomalies of SST over these two regions influence the APO intensity, but their effects are opposite to each other. Compared to the observation, the positive and negative anomalous centers of the extratropical tropospheric temperature triggered by the SST anomalies have a smaller spatial scale.