joint Spatiotemporal Modes of Surface Temperature and Sea Level Pressure Variability in the Northern Hemisphere during the Last Century

Abstract Coherent spatiotemporal modes of climatic variability are isolated based on a multivariate frequency domain singular value decomposition (SVD) of nearly a century of monthly Northern Hemisphere sea level pressure (SLP) and surface temperature data. Insight into the underlying physical processes associated with potential climatic signals is obtained by examining the relationship between surface temperature and inferred atmospheric circulation patterns as they evolve over the a typical cycle, taking potential seasonal distinctions into account. Our analysis provides evidence for two significant independent secular variations describing a secular warming trend (and accompanying changes in circulation patterns) and a century timescale “oscillation” marked by high-amplitude variations in temperature and SLP in the North Atlantic that are similar to those observed in recent model simulations. Quasi-oscillatory interdecadal (16–18 yr timescale) variability also displays a pattern similar to those predic...