Applying a KZ filter for studying North Carolina temperature and precipitation patterns associated with ENSO

The purpose of this paper is to examine and apply techniques for analyzing the teleconnection pattern between the ENSO and North Carolina's climate. This short note will focus on implementing a new filter developed by Kolmogorov-Zurbenko (KZ). This filter was recently used to separate different scales of motion in time series of temperature. The analysis is based on monthly sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies for the period 1950 to 1996. Two adjacent regions of the Pacific ocean are examined: nino1 (0-10S latitude, 90W-80W longitude) and nino3 (5N-5S, 150W-90W). Monthly temperature and precipitation anomalies are calculated for all eight NC climate zones and based on monthly mean values derived from the same period. The analysis is concerned with isolating the deterministic ENSO periodicity (2-7 years) from mesoscale, synoptic, and seasonal scales of motion and comparing it with similarly filtered temperature/precipitation patterns for the NC coastal region . It will be shown that a high correlation exists between sets of low pass-filtered time series. In addition, a temporal analysis of ENSO events with composite (Oct-Mar) precipitation anomalies is performed. All eight climate zone precipitation and temperature time series were correlated with both nino1 and nino3 anomalies. The coastal zones show a positive correlation of warm ENSO events with increased precipitation. Conversely, the temperature patterns display a negative correlation.