News Finding: "Our research also shows an amplification of this newly discovered teleconnection over the past four decades."
Paper Finding: Analysis also shows an amplification of this new teleconnection over the past four decades.
News Context: "With the New Zealand Index, we can predict from late summer the likelihood of above- or below-normal winter precipitation in the southwestern U.S., with a correlation in the order of 0.7 -- compared to the El Nino-Southern Oscillation technique, which has a correlation around 0.3 to 0.4," said lead author Antonios Mamalakis, a UCI graduate student in civil & environmental engineering. "Our research also shows an amplification of this newly discovered teleconnection over the past four decades." Mamalakis said the unexpected result was the discovery of persistent sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressure patterns in the southwestern Pacific Ocean that exhibited a strong correlation with precipitation in Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.
Paper Context: Here we report evidence that late-summer sea surface temperature and geopotential height anomalies close to New Zealand exhibit higher correlation with SWUS winter precipitation than ENSO, enhancing the potential for earlier and more accurate prediction. Analysis also shows an amplification of this new teleconnection over the past four decades. Our work highlights the need to understand the dynamic nature of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system in a changing climate for improving future predictions of regional precipitation.