Intraannual dissimilarities between monthly mean Northern Hemisphere temperature anomalies during the twentieth century

Abstract

Northern Hemisphere monthly mean temperature anomalies during the twentieth century exhibit seasonal differences. To expose the most significant intermonthly dissimilarities, here we investigate this issue in more details. We show that the trends significantly differ for the months close to the equinoxes. Using the technique of multidimensional scaling analysis we find that two underlying attributes are sufficient to acceptably describe the structure of the observed intermonthly dissimilarities. Namely, these are the monthly sample percentiles around the 30th and the 70th together with the linear trends. We find that intraannual temperature anomaly dissimilarities statistically depend on the seasonal cycles of the Northern Hemisphere oceanic heat content, sea ice and snow cover and the Arctic sea ice cover as well as on the seasonality of the chaoticity of the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric dynamics. We also speculate that the annual cycles of these ocean and cryosphere characteristics statistically set the pattern for the observed course of linear warming over the calendar months.