Drs. Judah Cohen and Jason Furtado from Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), a division of Verisk Climate, are analyzing and predicting the variability in the Arctic Oscillation (AO), the dominant mode of atmospheric variability in the Northern Hemisphere, in a new blog series Arctic Oscillation Analysis and Forecasts. The blog will also discuss the climate impact associated with AO variability: the AO has a strong relationship with temperature variability across the entire Northern Hemisphere. The time period discussed will be from the more immediate (the next several days) to the longer term (a season ahead).
Motivations for the AO blog have been recent advances in understanding significant climate variability associated with the AO and in predicting the AO using dynamical models and statistical techniques. Leading up to the winter months, we will focus on Eurasian snow cover, which has been shown to be a skillful predictor of the winter AO and of winter temperatures across northern Eurasia and the Eastern United States. On cue to help generate enthusiasm for this blog, Eurasian snow cover has advanced rapidly this past October, clocking in with the second highest total since record keeping began back in the late 1960’s (See Figure), promising to make for interesting observation of the AO variability this winter.