What are Intraseasonal Oscillations?
Variability in weather and climate is pervasive. This variability ranges over many time and space scales, from small-scale weather phenomena such as wind gusts, localized thunderstorms, and tornadoes to larger-scale features such as low-pressure and high-pressure weather systems, to even more prolonged features such as droughts and floods, to longer-lived climate phenomenon such as El Nio and La Nia, to even longer decadal trends. In general, the longer time-scale phenomena are often associated with changes in the atmospheric circulation that encompass areas far larger than a particular affected region. At times these persistent circulation features occur simultaneously over vast parts of the hemisphere, or even the globe, and result in abnormal weather, temperature and rainfall patterns in many regions. Scientists have discovered that important aspects of this variability are linked to global-scale phenomena that affect the distribution and intensity of tropical rainfall, thereby infl
Related Questions
- What is the typical scenario linking intraseasonal oscillations to heavy precipitation events in the western U.S.?
- How do scientists detect intraseasonal oscillations (also called MJO) and predict their evolution?
- What is the relationship between tropical intraseasonal oscillations and El Nio/ La Nia?
