Quantifying the Impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation on Western Iberia

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to evaluate the influence, bothphysical and socio-economical, of the most important large-scale phenomenon of the Northern Hemisphere, the North Atlantic Oscillation (hereafter NAO), on the climate of the western Iberian region. Using high and low NAO index composites, statistically significant anomaly fields of climate variables are then interpreted based on physical mechanisms associated with anomalous large-scale circulation.