Abstract
The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive review and characterization of selected climate variability indices. While we discuss many major climate variability mechanisms, we focus on four principal modes of climate variability related to the dynamics of Earth’s oceans and their interactions with the atmosphere: the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). All these oscillation modes are of broad interest and considerable relevance, also in climate impact studies related to teleconnections, i.e., relationships between climate variations at distant locations. We try to decipher temporal patterns present in time series of different oscillation modes in the ocean–atmosphere system using exploratory analysis of the raw data, their structure, and properties, as well as illustrating the quasi-periodic behavior via wavelet analysis. With this contribution, we hope to help researchers in identifying and selecting data sources and climate variability indices that match their needs.
Highlights
Trend detection in time series illustrating climate change is a very common research topic
While we discuss many major climate variability mechanisms, we focus on four principal modes of climate variability, all of them related to the dynamics of the planet’s oceans and their interactions with the atmosphere: the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Atlantic
In the Supplementary Material, we provide complementary graphic material related to time series and quasi-periodic behavior of ENSO indices (Niño and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) type) that are not included in the main text
Summary
Trend detection in time series illustrating climate change is a very common research topic. There are strong deviations of a climate-related variable from a gradual, long-term trend that can likely be explained by natural, internal climate variability. The availability of time series of indices representing different climate variability patterns makes it possible to undertake impact studies at various scales, from local to regional to continental to global. The term climate variability generally describes variations in the climatic system. A part of the climate variability is strictly periodic. Another part is quasi-periodic and occurs in the form of distinct modes of climate patterns, but not in regular time intervals
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