Upper-tropospheric bridging of wintertime surface climate variability in the Euro-Atlantic region and northern Asia

A remarkable feature of interannual climate variability is a robust link of wintertime anomalies of surface air temperature (SAT) in northern Asia to pan-Atlantic SAT variations associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Here statistical analyses of data from the era of satellite observations (1979–2017) are used to show that about 80% of the variance of the winter (December-March) mean area-averaged SAT anomalies in northern Asia can be explained by the anomalous surface circulation associated with an NAO-like mode of sea level pressure variability over extratropical Eurasia. These SAT anomalies are related equally strongly to the “Lake Baikal” vortex representing variations of the upper-tropospheric circulation over northern Asia. Support is given for the scenario that this vortex drives SAT anomalies in northern Asia via surface-reaching displacements of isentropic surfaces and that it is coupled to climate variability in the Euro-Atlantic sector via interactions between the North Atlantic storm track, quasi-stationary planetary waves, and zonal-mean zonal winds. The results underpin the importance of a lesser-known zonal wavenumber-3 structure of disturbances trapped over Eurasia by the polar front jet rather than the better-known zonal wavenumber-5 structure of disturbances trapped by the subtropical jet for NAO teleconnections.