Abstract
Teleconnections describe remote connections (typically thousands of kilometers) of the climate system. These are of great importance in climate dynamics as they reflect the transportation of energy and climate change on global scales (like the El Niño phenomenon). Yet, the path of influence propagation between such remote regions, and weighting associated with different paths, are only partially known. Here we propose a systematic climate network approach to find and quantify the optimal paths between remotely distant interacting locations. Specifically, we separate the correlations between two grid points into direct and indirect components, where the optimal path is found based on a minimal total cost function of the direct links. We demonstrate our method using near surface air temperature reanalysis data, on identifying cross-latitude teleconnections and their corresponding optimal paths. The proposed method may be used to quantify and improve our understanding regarding the emergence of climate patterns on global scales.
- Received 7 September 2015
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.268501
© 2015 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Synopsis
Finding Climate Teleconnection Paths
Published 30 December 2015
A new method allows researchers to extract climate connections between remote regions from global temperature datasets.
See more in Physics