Can Amazon Rainfall influence the Winter Weather over Europe and North America?
Rong
Fu, Georgia Institute of Technology, fu@eas.gatech.edu
(Presenting)
Robert
E.
Dickinson, Georgia Institute of Technology, robted@eas.gatech.edu
Mingxuan
Chen, Georgia Institute of Technology, mchen@eas.gatech.edu
Hui
Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology, huiwang@eas.gatech.edu
Using state-of-art daily scatterometer winds provided by NASA QuikSCAT, the authors found that an increase in wet-season rainfall over the Amazon could amplify the anomalous atmospheric circulation patterns resemble to NAO. This pattern, however, cannot be adequately captured by ECMWF and NCEP reanalyses at the surface. The latitudinal propagation of the atmospheric waves appears to carry out such influence, consistent with previous numerical experiments. The same dynamic processes could determine the influences of strong interannual and decadal variations of Amazon rainfall on the anomlaous atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic and Euorpean regions. This finding also supports the simulated impact on climate over Europe and North Atlantic region by changes of Amazon rainfall due to decrease of rainforest.