Teleconnections between tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies and North Carolina precipitation anomalies during El Nino events

Abstract

Linear teleconnections of El Nino events and precipitation over a regional coastal land mass were analyzed. Two statistical techniques were used. First, the Empirical Orthogonal Function extracted major variances of the monthly tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies and coastal North Carolina precipitation anomalies. Second, the Canonical Correlation Analysis calculated the linear combinations of the anomaly data sets that were highly correlated. The results show that El Nino-related precipitation anomalies along the North Carolina coast were positive from November to May and negative between June and October consistent with large-scale studies. Results indicate simple, linear statistical techniques can be effectively adopted to determine teleconnections on a local scale.