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Camp & Tung 2007
Camp, C.D. and Tung, K.-K. (2007). Stratospheric polar warming by ENSO in winter: A statistical study. Geophysical Research Letters 34: doi: 10.1029/2006GL028521. issn: 0094-8276.

Applying Linear Discriminant Analysis on 47 years of NCEP stratospheric temperature data from 1959 to 2005, we find that the warm-ENSO ("El Niqo") years are significantly warmer also in the stratosphere at the Northern Hemisphere polar and midlatitudes than the cold-ENSO ("La Niqa") years, during winter. Specifically, the zonal mean, December-February mean, 10--50 hPa mean temperature, when projected onto the coherent spatial structure that best distinguishes the two ENSO groups, classified according to the equatorial Pacific-ocean Cold Tongue Index, is 40K warmer in the polar stratosphere in the warm-ENSO mean than in the cold-ENSO mean. The difference is statistically significant at above the 95% confidence level. This is the first time statistical significance has been established for ENSO's influence on the polar stratosphere. A surprising result is that the ENSO perturbation to the polar stratosphere is comparable in magnitude to the better-known QBO perturbation, which is 3.80K between easterly QBO mean and the westerly QBO mean.

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Abstract

Keywords
Atmospheric Processes, Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513), Atmospheric Processes, Middle atmosphere dynamics (0341, 0342), Atmospheric Processes, Ocean/atmosphere interactions (0312, 4504), Atmospheric Processes, Polar meteorology, Atmospheric Processes, Stratosphere/troposphere interactions
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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