Over the past fifteen years, our society has come to view the El
Niño/La Niña phenomenona less as a climate anomaly and more as an
invisible spirit that is responsible for nearly every weather-related
adversity out there. We blame it for our dead car batteries in January, for the high
price of oranges in the summer, and for those cold snaps that hit us in early
October. In their zeal to tap into and sell this belief, the public media have
fed us a long stream of stories on El Niño-related events. However,
theyve ignored those other climate anomalies outside of the Pacific Basin
that drive the weather. Probably the biggest and most powerful of these climate
phenomena is the aptly named North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). While the North
Atlantic Oscillation doesn't generate the catastrophic floods, climate changes,
and carnage associated with El Niño, its effects are much
more consistent and nearly as widespread. |
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The NAO is the relationship between a high-pressure system over the Azores
Islands and a low-pressure system over Iceland. Both of these systems are
present on average year round. For most of the spring, summer, and fall these
systems remain weak and ineffectual. However, throughout the course of the
winter, the NAO comes alive as both the high and the low intensify and fluctuate
in pressure relative to one another, creating dramatic variations
over the Atlantic Ocean and the surrounding continents. When the pressure
difference between the two systems is large, they bring higher temperatures
to northern Europe, cause droughts in the Middle
East, and push up the mercury in the northeastern United States. When the
pressure difference between the two systems is small, they push wet weather
toward those countries surrounding the Mediterranean, send Scandinavia into a
deep freeze, and decrease the temperature along the East Coast. |
A strong North Atlantic Oscillation (large difference in pressure between the mid-latitude and tropical North Atlantic) tends to produce more severe weather in the North Atlantic, increased snowfall in Sweden (left), and an early spring in Washington, DC (right) [Photographs copyright Mark Schoeberl (left) & Barbara Summey (right)] | ||
Despite the lack of publicity the NAO receives, teams of scientists at NASA and other institutions around the world have been studying it for many decades. They found that, much like El Niño, the NAO varies in a rhythmic pattern from decade to decade. Ever since the 1960s, the difference in pressure between the Azores high and the Icelandic low has repeatedly grown on average for three to five years and then has waned and decreased on average for another three to five years. Though the researchers have not had much luck in predicting the anomaly's behavior, many believe that its multi-year variations may be linked to currents in the sea or the formation of sea ice. Their hope is that by studying the NAO and building models mimicking its behavior, they may someday understand what drives these variations. From there they may even be able to predict its behavior. |
Typical weather caused by a negative NAO (small pressure difference between the mid-latitude and tropical North Atlantic) is fewer storms overall, clear skies over the Normandy coast of France (left,) and rain in Spain (right). (Photographs copyright Eric Simmon) |
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