Remote weather associated with North Pacific subtropical sea level high properties

Abstract

AbstractRemote events influencing North Pacific (NP) subtropical high properties in monthly and daily data are identified. Variability in the NP during summer is far more strongly dominated by midlatitude events than in South Pacific (SP); low‐pass filtering is required to see tropical associations.The dominant pattern in composites, correlations, and regressions is a midlatitude wave train. A stronger NP high was led by higher sea‐level pressure (SLP) just east of Japan and lower SLP over central Canada and to a lesser extent over western tropical Pacific.Various mechanisms have been proposed to force the NP high: Heating over southwestern North America (with cooling off the west coast). However, higher temperatures over North America follow stronger SLP over the NP high and occur much further east than postulated. Higher SLP occurs where temperatures are lower over western North America and adjacent ocean. Thermal pattern is consistent with temperature advection between NP high and Canadian low. Precipitation over and near Central America. However, SLP increase on the SE side of the high is led by higher SLP (and higher outgoing longwave radiation (OLR)) along the west coast of Mexico and Central America. Normalized regressions find a very weak lower OLR in North American monsoon preceding stronger NP high, but the region is much smaller in size and magnitude than other significant areas. Precipitation over Indonesia and southeast Asia. Statistics provide some support for lower SLP and OLR over Indonesia preceding higher SLP in the center, west, and northwest sides of NP high. The lower SLP and OLR appear to migrate into southeast Asia, perhaps independently, perhaps from stronger NP high. The NP high has a strong connection to El Niño during winter, but no significant link during summer. Only the south side of NP high appears (weakly) linked to the Madden Julian oscillation (MJO). Copyright © 2006 Royal Meteorological Society