NCAR reports on a teleconnection between the Pacific and continental USA

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (“NCAR”) reports on a newly substantiated teleconnection between positive sea surface temperature anomalies (“SSTA”) in the Pacific and the temperatures over the continental United States (“CONUS”) 50 days later. A teleconnection is:

A linkage between weather changes occurring in widely separated regions of the globe.

as defined by the American Meteorological Society (of which I am a member).

The basic evidence (but see the NCAR post is in the following figure:

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So, let’s see. The Pacific area SSTAs now look like:

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That’s modest warming. The teleconnection predicts that will influence temperatures in CONUS in the second week of February, 2017.

By the way, SSTAs near the East Coast of the U.S. now look like:

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Those are hot. And you’ll note that large dark blue blob at the top right … A cold Arctic outflow. That stops the Gulf Stream flow northwards, slows it down, and piles the waters up against the Northeast, contributing to sea level rise there.