Scale-Dependent Relationships Between U.S. Temperatures and Teleconnections

Temperature patterns in the United States have been linked to numerous teleconnections, including the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Pacific–North American (PNA) pattern, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Madden–Julian Oscillation, and the West Pacific Oscillation (WPO). However, the relative influence of these teleconnections likely changes with the time scale of interest. For example, ENSO plays a bigger role on seasonal scales, while the MJO has a greater effect on intraseasonal scales. This study uses a new preliminary dataset of daily statewide temperature anomalies based on the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN-Daily) to investigate these relationships. Simple time averaging of the temperature data will isolate temperature anomalies that are either intraseasonal (5–40 days) or seasonal (> 40 days). Preliminary results suggest that the MJO and the WPO are the leading drivers of U.S. temperatures on the intraseasonal scale.