Teleconnections in the Geopotential Height Field during the Northern Hemisphere Winter

Abstract Contemporaneous correlations between geopotential heights on a given pressure surface at widely separated points on earth, referred to as teleconnections in this paper, are studied in an attempt to identify and document recurrent spatial patterns which might be indicative of standing oscillations in the planetary waves during the Northern Hemisphere winter, with time scales on the order of a month or longer. A review of existing literature on the subject reveals the existence of at least four such patterns: the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oscillations identified by Walker and Bliss (1932). a zonally symmetric seesaw between sea level pressures in polar and temperature latitudes, first noted by Lorenz (1951), and what we will refer to as the Pacific/North American pattern, which has been known to operational long-range forecasters in this country since the 1950's. A data set consisting of NMC monthly mean sea level pressure and 500 mb height analyses for a 15-year period is used as a basis fo...