Department of Earth System Science

The leading pattern of extratropical Pacific sea surface temperature variability [the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO)] is shown to depend on observed variability in the spatiotemporal distribution of tropospheric Rossby wave breaking (RWB), where RWB is the irreversible overturning of potential vorticity on isentropic surfaces. Composite analyses based on hundreds of RWB cases show that anticyclonic (cyclonic) RWB is associated with a warm, moist (cool, dry) column that extends down to a surface anticyclonic (cyclonic) circulation, and that the moisture and temperature advection associated with the surface circulation patterns force turbulent heat flux anomalies that project onto the spatial pattern of the PDO. The RWB patterns that are relevant to the PDO are closely tied to El Niño–Southern Oscillation, the Pacific–North American pattern, and the northern annular mode. These results explain the free troposphere-to-surface segment of the atmospheric bridge concept wherein El Niño anomalies emerge in summer and modify circulation patterns that act over several months to force sea surface temperature anomalies in the extratropical Pacific during late winter or early spring. Leading patterns of RWB account for a significant fraction of PDO interannual variability for any month of the year. A multilinear model is developed in which the January mean PDO index for 1958–2006 is regressed upon the leading principal components of cyclonic and anticyclonic RWB from the immediately preceding winter and summer months (four indexes in all), accounting for more than two-thirds of the variance.