A Synoptic Climatology of Episodic, Subseasonal Retractions of the Pacific Jet

Abstract Twenty-eight years of NCEP–NCAR reanalysis data are employed in a composite analysis of the structure and evolution of the large-scale circulation associated with rapid, subseasonal, westward retractions of the Northern Hemisphere Pacific jet. Nineteen Pacific jet retractions are identified in the dataset. The salient characteristics of these transitions are presented, emphasizing the structure and evolution of anomalies in the zonal wind, upper-tropospheric geopotential height, sea level pressure (SLP), and tropopause potential vorticity (PV). The composite analysis demonstrates that as the jet retracts, a transition from a dominant negative anomaly to a dominant positive anomaly across the North Pacific in both the 500-hPa geopotential height and SLP fields occurs in ~10 days. The resulting anticyclonic anomalies are sprawling and intense with SLP anomalies of nearly 20 hPa and 500-hPa geopotential height anomalies of more than 200 m. The vertical superposition of these upper- and lower-level anomalies indicates that these composite structures are equivalent barotropic. These results are also consistent with the composite 200–250-hPa Ertel PV anomaly field, in which a jet retraction event is characterized by the formation of a zonally elongated, meridionally oriented PV anomaly couplet in the central North Pacific that becomes increasingly isotropic in the jet exit region simultaneous with the retraction of the jet. Because of the large spatial scale of these events, the results are also discussed in the context of storm-track variability, the East Asian winter monsoon, and tropical diabatic heating anomalies.