A great part of winter temperature variability over southwestern Europe (SWE) shows a very low correlation with the North Atlantic or Arctic Oscillation indices. The patterns of winter mean surface air temperature over SWE were obtained from gridded and instrumental data. The first mode is highly correlated with the East Atlantic (EA) pattern and explains temperature variations of the same sign over the whole domain. The second mode, however, is correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and shows a dipolar structure with significant negative values in northern Africa and the southern Iberian Peninsula and positive values toward northern Europe. Thus the NAO only influences the meridional gradient of temperature over the area, and the second mode explains a significantly lower fraction of variance than the first mode. Both modes of temperature variability depend on the stationary component of the sensible heat fluxes but cannot be explained through the eddy sensible heat fluxes. It is well known that precipitation depends on the existence of baroclinic systems over the area. According to the results in this paper, this does not hold for temperature. This explains the different sensitivities of SWE precipitation and temperature to the North Atlantic Oscillation. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union