Abstract
It is found that the appearance of the western Pacific (WP) pattern and the Pacific/North American (PNA) pattern in the northern winter is statistically related to a biennially oscillating sea surface temperature (SST) in the South China Sea (SCS) and associated precipitation variability over the tropical western Pacific in the following way; (1) When precipitation is strongly suppressed (enhanced) east of the Philippines at the warm (cold) phase of NINO4 SST, the WP (the inverse WP) pattern tends to appear. This is qualitatively consistent with a local Hadley circulation theory. (2) When negative (positive) precipitation anomalies are small east of the Philippines or when those are shifted westward at the warm (cold) phase of NINO4 SST, the PNA (the inverse PNA) pattern tends to appear rather than the WP (the inverse WP) pattern. (3) The above variability of the precipitation in the tropical western Pacific corresponds to that responsible for the biennial oscillation in the SCS SST and the neighboring SST.
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