Drivers of North Atlantic Oscillation Events

Abstract

This work is set out to quantify the contribution of tropical and extratropical atmospheric forcing mechanisms to the formation of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) pattern. Although the NAO varies on a wide range of time scales, we focus on 10–60 d. At these time scales, mechanisms are at play in the atmosphere that can generate the characteristic dipole pattern. We focus on the tropical Rossby Wave Source (RWS) and extratropical eddy activity. Anomalous tropical and extratropical vorticity forcing associated with the NAO is derived from atmospheric reanalysis data and applied in an idealised barotropic model. Also, using winds from composites of the NAO, the vorticity forcing is derived inversely from the barotropic vorticity equation. Both types of forcing are imposed in the barotropic model in the tropics and extratropics, respectively. An important result is that the tropics dampen the NAO as a result of a negative feedback generated in the extratropics. The damping is strongest, about 30%, for the negative phase of the NAO. For the positive phase, the damping is about 50% smaller. The results show that the barotropic vorticity equation can represent the dynamics of both tropical and extratropical forcing related to the formation of the NAO patterns.

Keywords

• North Atlantic Oscillation
• Rossby wave source
• eddy activity
• tropical forcing