期刊名称:Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography
电子版ISSN:1600-0870
出版年度:2019
卷号:71
期号:1
页码:1-13
DOI:10.1080/16000870.2019.1633847
摘要:The topic of the existence of planetary winter circulation regimes has gone through a long debate. This
article contributes to this debate by investigating nonlinearity in a 3-level quasi-geostrophic model and the
Japanese JRA-55 reanalysis. The method uses averaged flow tendencies and kernel principal component (PC)
analysis. Within two-dimensional (2D) kernel PCs the model reveals two fixed (or stationary) points. The
probability density function (PDF) within this space is strongly bimodal where the modes match the regions
of low tendencies in consistency with low-order conceptual models. The circulation regimes represent
respectively zonal and blocked flows. Application to daily winter northern hemisphere sea level pressure and
500-hPa geopotential height yields strong bimodal PDFs. The modes represent respectively polar highs and
lows with signatures of North Atlantic Oscillation. A clear climate change signal is observed showing a clear
reduction (increase) of occurrence probability of polar high (low), translating into an increase of probability
of zonal flow. Relation of the climate change signal to the polar amplification hypothesis is discussed.