PCIC Science Brief: Tropical Pacific Impacts on Cooling North american winters

This PCIC Science Brief covers a recent paper by Sigmond and Fyfe (2016) that was published in Nature Climate Change. The authors investigate the causes of cooler winters over the early 2000s in North America and find that they vary by region. In the northwest, these cooler winters were largely due to a pattern of western cooling and central warming in the tropical Pacific Ocean. In central North America, the cooler winters were primarily due to changes in the northerly winds driven by increased sea level pressure on the west coast of North America.

Read this Science Brief.

Sigmond, M. and J.C. Fyfe, 2016: Tropical Pacific impacts on cooling North American winters. Nature Climate Change, Advance Online Publication, doi:10.1038/nclimate3069.