What Kinds of Atmospheric Anomalies Drive Wintertime North Pacific Basin-Scale Subtropical Oceanic Front Intensity Variation?

Abstract

The basin-scale subtropical oceanic front zone (STFZ) is a key region for midlatitude air–sea interaction in the North Pacific. However, previous studies considered midlatitude sea surface temperature (SST) variabilities as a response to atmospheric stochastic forcing. With reanalysis and observational data, this study investigates what kinds of atmospheric anomalies drive the wintertime North Pacific STFZ intensity variation. Lead correlations show that prior to the STFZ’s enhancement, there exist persistent atmospheric anomalies characterized by a negative-phase Arctic Oscillation (AO) and a positive-phase Pacific–North American (PNA) pattern, lasting for up to 80 and 50 days and peaking at 20- and 8-day leads, respectively. It is further found that the long-lasting negative-phase AO is conducive to stronger low-tropospheric baroclinicity at around 40°N over North Pacific where there is a climatological baroclinic region. The stronger baroclinicity leads to more synoptic transient eddy activities, promoting an equivalent barotropic low geopotential height anomaly north of STFZ via transient eddy vorticity forcing. The geopotential height anomaly propagates downstream, triggering a PNA-like pattern. With such an AO-promoted atmospheric internal wave–flow feedback, the regional PNA pattern is intensified and embedded in the annular AO mode, accompanied with an intensified Aleutian low and surface westerly wind that peak at an 8-day lead, preconditioning a persistent (nonstochastic) atmospheric forcing on the STFZ. The intensified surface westerly predominantly tends to drive a southward Ekman transport and increase upward surface turbulent heat fluxes into the atmosphere through increasing surface wind speed and sea–air temperature difference, amplifying the underlying negative SST anomaly and cross-frontal meridional SST gradient, ultimately intensifying the STFZ.