Combined winter climate regimes over the North Atlantic/European sector 1766-2000

Abstract

This paper presents combined winter climate regimes for the 1766-2000 period over the North Atlantic/European sector. We expand previous studies on recurrent regimes by combining spatially high-resolved independent reconstructions of the 500 hPa geopotential height, land surface air temperature, and precipitation fields. Nonlinear Principal Component Analysis is applied to the data in order to account for the underlying nonlinear dynamics of climate regimes. Three recurrent winter climate regimes are detected. One regime resembles in its pressure, temperature, and precipitation pattern the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation, whereas the other two regimes are European blocking situations. Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.