Drafting Authors: Neil Adger, Pramod Aggarwal, Shardul Agrawala, Joseph Alcamo, Abdelkader Allali, Oleg Anisimov, Nigel Arnell, Michel Boko, Osvaldo Canziani, Timothy Carter, Gino Casassa, Ulisses Confalonieri, Rex Victor Cruz, Edmundo de Alba Alcaraz, William Easterling, Christopher Field, Andreas Fischlin, Blair Fitzharris, Carlos Gay García, Clair Hanson, Hideo Harasawa, Kevin Hennessy, Saleemul Huq, Roger Jones, Lucka Kajfež Bogataj, David Karoly, Richard Klein, Zbigniew Kundzewicz, Murari Lal, Rodel Lasco, Geoff Love, Xianfu Lu, Graciela Magrín, Luis José Mata, Roger McLean, Bettina Menne, Guy Midgley, Nobuo Mimura, Monirul Qader Mirza, José Moreno, Linda Mortsch, Isabelle Niang-Diop, Robert Nicholls, Béla Nováky, Leonard Nurse, Anthony Nyong, Michael Oppenheimer, Jean Palutikof, Martin Parry, Anand Patwardhan, Patricia Romero Lankao, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Stephen Schneider, Serguei Semenov, Joel Smith, John Stone, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, David Vaughan, Coleen Vogel, Thomas Wilbanks, Poh Poh Wong, Shaohong Wu, Gary Yohe

Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Greenland ice-core data have revealed large decadal climate variations over the North Atlantic that can be related to a major source of low-frequency variability, the North Atlantic Oscillation. Over the past decade, the Oscillation has remained in one extreme phase during the winters, contributing significantly to the recent wintertime warmth across Europe and to cold conditions in the northwest Atlantic. An evaluation of the atmospheric moisture budget reveals coherent large-scale changes since 1980 that are linked to recent dry conditions over southern Europe and the Mediterranean, whereas northern Europe and parts of Scandinavia have generally experienced wetter than normal conditions.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/269/5224/676.full.pdf

Decadal Trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation: Regional Temperatures and Precipitation

Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing

The leading empirical orthogonal function of the wintertime sea-level pressure field is more strongly coupled to surface air temperature fluctuations over the Eurasian continent than the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). It resembles the NAO in many respects; but its primary center of action covers more of the Arctic, giving it a more zonally symmetric appearance. Coupled to strong fluctuations at the 50-hPa level on the intraseasonal, interannual, and interdecadal time scales, this "Arctic Oscillation" (AO)can be interpreted as the surface signature of modulations in the strength of the polar vortex aloft. It is proposed that the zonally asymmetric surface air temperature and mid-tropospheric circulation anomalies observed in association with the AO may be secondary baroclinic features induced by the land-sea contrasts. The same modal structure is mirrored in the pronounced trends in winter and springtime surface air temperature, sea-level pressure, and 50-hPa height over the past 30 years: parts of Eurasia have warmed by as much as several K, sea-level pressure over parts of the Arctic has fallen by 4 hPa, and the core of the lower stratospheric polar vortex has cooled by several K. These trends can be interpreted as the development of a systematic bias in one of the atmosphere's dominant, naturally occurring modes of variability.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/98GL00950

The Arctic oscillation signature in the wintertime geopotential height and temperature fields

/pdf/statistical-analysis-in-climate-research-51ik9f04rx.pdf

Statistical Analysis in Climate Research

The sun at sunspot peaks enhances the climatological means in the Pacific region from the stratosphere to the surface of the sea. The robust signal is physically consistent and statistically significant in the 14 sunspot peaks for which sea-level pressure and sea-surface temperature data are available. No other place shows such a strong influence of the sunspot peaks in the northern winter. Why in the Pacific and why a cooling of equatorial surface waters at sunspot peaks? I suggest that in the Indonesian region the strong convection, higher and colder tropopause, warmer water, and Indonesian topography are conducive to channel the solar influence mainly to this region, leading to an enhancement of the Walker and Hadley circulations, expansion and intensification of the dry zone, and cooler equatorial surface waters.

/pdf/why-is-the-influence-of-sunspot-peaks-on-the-ocean-and-u0qp17exg4.pdf

Why Is the Influence of Sunspot Peaks on the Ocean and Atmosphere in Northern Winter Seen Mainly in the Pacific Region

Observations of monthly mean sea level pressure, surface air temperature, and 500 mb and 300 mb geopotential heights and temperatures are used to study trends in the Southern Hemisphere from 1951–81. The winter mean sea level pressure fell over the Indian/Atlantic half of the hemisphere from the 1950s to the 1960s, and rose over the other half. Generally, these trends reversed from the 1960s to the 1970s. The trends are equivalent barotropic. The trends of temperatures are often regionally dependent. There was a significant warming over Antarctica from the 1960s to 1970s at all upper levels except for a small area on the Indian Ocean side.

Climatic Trends in the Southern Hemisphere

A Selected Climatology of the Southern Hemisphere

When the Elector Friederich III of Brandenburg was crowned in Konigsberg as the first King of Prussia on the 18th of January 1701, 
… the sky was overcast and the weather freezing The weatherglass hung in a relatively exposed room and showed 16 and a half degrees The clouds began to break about 10 o’clock, and as the artillery pieces on the ramparts were fired the clouds drew apart and the sun began to shine

Berlin and the Stratosphere

Clayton was the first to note that the precipitation and pressure at several stations in the United States contained an approximately two-year oscillation. His stations were located all over the country, most were from the period 1874–1883, but there were some among them going as far hack as 1839 (Clayton 1884, 1885). Clayton’s oscillation had a period of about 25 months; its existence was confirmed by Landsberg (1962) by means of data from the USA between 1870 and 1956. In Clayton’s day observations were scarce and the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) in the equatorial stratospheric winds was not known, and since many scientists then as now accept only phenomena which they can explain, Clayton’s findings were. as he himself often mentioned, met with much scepticism. His answer to the sceptics is worth reprinting: 
I will admit that I am unable to explain the cause of my cycle. but if every discovery that could not be at once explained by known laws, or did not immediately fall into line with what had been previously ascertained, had been rejected in t he history of scientific research, then we should have lost some of the fairest flowers of modern science. There was no reason whatever known why Kepler’s laws should exist when he discovered them, in fact they were at complete variance with all that been before thought on t he subject, and Kepler never knew any reason for them: but Newton came and showed them to be the necessary consequence of the action of certain universal laws. There is no known reason why the number of sunspots should go through a cycle of about eleven years, or why there should be a connection between them and terrestial magnetism, but there is scarcely a scientific man of repute that doubts it. …

Harry van Loon

Papers

Why Is the Influence of Sunspot Peaks on the Ocean and Atmosphere in Northern Winter Seen Mainly in the Pacific Region

Climatic Trends in the Southern Hemisphere

A Selected Climatology of the Southern Hemisphere

Berlin and the Stratosphere

The Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO)