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Otterman et al. 2002
Otterman, J., Angell, J.K., Ardizzone, J., Atlas, R., Schubert, S., Starr, D. and Wu, M.-L. (2002). North-Atlantic surface winds examined as the source of winter warming in Europe. Geophysical Research Letters 29: doi: 10.1029/2002GL015256. issn: 0094-8276.

Trajectories traced backward from western Europe point to the warm southwestern North Atlantic as the source region of the warm maritime air brought into Europe by low-level southwesterlies. Over the eastern North Atlantic, patterns of ocean-surface winds in late winter changed during the second half of the 20th century, and the southwesterly direction became even more predominant. In January-to-March, the strength of southwesterlies in this region and in source region increased significantly in the years 1948--1995, and is likely to account for a large part of the observed warming in Europe during this period. For 1996--2001, however, this trend in southwesterlies appears broken, consistent with a downturn of the winter warming reported from central Europe after 1995. Monthly indexes of North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO, show a similar pattern, rising till 1995 and a downturn for the 1996--2002 winters and early spring, indicating that this climate oscillation is associated with the NAO.

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Abstract

Keywords
Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Boundary layer processes, Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Climatology, Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Ocean/atmosphere interactions (0312, 4504)
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
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Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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