North American Winter Dipole
Linking Western drought with Eastern freeze
and its flips
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New research portrays the dynamic processes reshaping the North American Winter Dipole and how it has amplified in recent decades.
New research portrays the dynamic processes reshaping the North American Winter Dipole and how it has amplified in recent decades.
Source: Lee et al. (2024)
This study delves into the key elements influencing changes in major atmospheric connection patterns in the Northern Hemisphere during winter, focusing on their impact on North America's unusual weather. It finds a consistent effect from the North American winter dipole over seventy years, unlike the variable influences from the PNA pattern and minimal effects from the North Atlantic. A notable discovery is a negative correlation between the North American winter dipole and the Pacific North American pattern, indicating a shift in connection phases. This shift is linked to stronger upper-level ridges in western North America, likely driven by greenhouse gas emissions affecting the Asia-Pacific jet stream. The research underscores human-induced global warming's significant impact on atmospheric circulation dynamics and climate trends.
This new study answers critical questions raised in the previous work by Chien et al. (2019), who suggested that the ridge in the western U.S. and the temperature dipole have amplified, owing to internal and external variabilities such as tropical Pacific heating and Arctic warming. The intense reversal of NAWD in the winter of 2016–2017 and associated California floods suggest that the variability of NAWD has also increased.
First news about the winter "dipole" (April 17, 2014):
First news about the winter "dipole" (April 17, 2014):
In recent years, a pair of large-scale circulation patterns consisting of an anomalous ridge over northwestern North America and trough over northeastern North America was found to accompany extreme winter weather events such as the 2013–2015 California drought and eastern U.S. cold outbreaks. Referred to as the North American winter dipole (NAWD), our studies have found both a marked natural variability and a warming-induced amplification trend in the NAWD. The polarity and location of NAWD coincide with the wintertime stationary waves over North America. Oscillating in sync with the stationary waves, the positive-phase NAWD enhances the east-west temperature contrast in North America including prolonged freezing in the Great Lakes.
A wintertime stationary-wave perspective on the North American Winter Dipole's dynamics:
Presentation on the connection between natural gas (market) and the dipole variability and forecast:
NAWD Publications:
NAWD Publications:
Lee, J., S.-Y. Wang, S.-W. Son, D. Kim, J.-H. Jeong, H. Kim, and J.-H. Yoon, 2024: Evolving winter atmospheric teleconnection patterns and their potential triggers across western North America. npj Clim Atmos Sci 7, 63 (PDF)
Hong, J., S.-Y. Wang, S.-W. Son, J.-H. Jeong, S.-W. Kim, B. Kim, H. Kim, and J.-H. Yoon, 2023: On the increasing fluctuations of midlatitude winter temperature associated with the Arctic in the 1.5° and 2.0° warmer world. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, in press. (PDF)
Park, H. L., K.-H. Seo, B.-M. Kim, J.-Y. Kim, and S.-Y. Wang, 2020: Dominant Wintertime Surface Air Temperature Modes in the Northern Hemisphere Extratropics. Climate Dynamics, DOI:10.1007/s00382-020-05478-x (PDF)
Chien, Y.-T., S.-Y. Wang, Y. Chikamoto, S. L. Voelker, J. D. D. Meyer, and J.-H. Yoon, 2019: North American winter dipole: Observed and simulated changes in circulations. Atmosphere, DOI:10.3390/atmos10120793 (PDF)
Stuivenvolt Allen, J. J.and S.-Y. Wang, 2019: Data-mining climate variability as an indicator of U.S. natural gas, Frontiers in Big Data (Data-driven Climate Sciences), doi: 10.3389/fdata.2019.00020
O'Brien. J. P., T. A. O'Brien, C. M. Patricola, S.-Y. Wang, 2019: Metrics for Understanding Large-scale Controls of Multivariate Temperature and Precipitation Variability. Climate Dynamics, DOI:10.1007/s00382-019-04749-6 (PDF)
Voelker, S. L., S.-Y. Wang, T. E. Dawson, J. S. Roden, C. J. Still , F. J. Longstaffe, and A. Ayalon, 2019: Tree-ring isotopes adjacent to Lake Superior reveal cold winter anomalies for the Great Lakes region of North America. Scientific Reports, 9, #4412 (PDF)
Wang, S.-Y., J.-H. Yoon, E. Becker, and R. R. Gillies, 2017: California from drought to deluge. Nature Climate Change, 7, 465-468. (PDF)
Wang, S.-Y., W.-R. Huang, and J.-H. Yoon, 2015: The North American winter 'dipole' and extremes activity: A CMIP5 assessment. Atmospheric Science Letters, (PDF), doi: 10.1002/asl2.565.
Wang, S.-Y., L. Hipps, R. R. Gillies, and J.-H. Yoon, 2014: Probable causes of the abnormal ridge accompanying the 2013-14 California drought: ENSO precursor and anthropogenic warming footprint. Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1002/2014GL059748
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