Circumglobal Teleconnections, the Jet Stream Waveguide, and the North Atlantic Oscillation

Monthly and seasonally averaged upper-tropospheric Northern Hemisphere winter fields are examined to determine whether the waveguiding effect of the time-averaged tropospheric jets on low-frequency disturbances that is predicted by theory does affect the behavior of these disturbances. It is found that, indeed, disturbances in the vicinity of the mean jets, particularly the jet that stretches across South Asia, are fundamentally different from those that reside in regions where the mean winds have weaker meridional gradients, like the mid-Pacific. Patterns of variability in the jets tend to be smaller scale and to consist of zonally oriented chains of anomalies while variability in the mid-Pacific is composed of patterns with distinct meridional orientation. Because they are meridionally trapped and zonally elongated, patterns associated with the jet stream waveguide connect activity at points that are much farther apart than do patterns in other regions of the globe.