A method for studying the influence of intra-seasonal variability on the inter-annual variability of climate fields

Abstract

A computational technique is proposed for studying patterns of interannual variability of climate seasonal means that arise from intraseasonal variability. The method, using monthly means of climate data, is more computationally efficient than other current methods that use daily means to estimate the spatial covariability of the intraseasonal component. Removing this component, it is possible to estimate the long-range potentially predictable patterns of climate variability. The method is applied to a study of the Southern Hemisphere winter circulation and compared with a method using daily data to show that the results are very similar.