Damien Irving edited discussion.tex  over 8 years ago

Commit id: 5aa159edafc2cf7c789792e2c73257fd5f121c54

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One topic that was not addressed by our climatology was variability in the east/west location of the PSA pattern. In response to the emergence of central Pacific ENSO events in recent years, some authors have suggested that the PSA pattern moves east/west depending on the precise location of the associated tropical SST anomalies (REF). Others suggest that the pattern is relatively stationary (REFS), however either way the broad region (10$^{\circ}$N to 10$^{\circ}$S in the rotated coordinate system) used by our identification algorithm renders it insensitive to subtle east/west movements. Given that the PSA pattern did not show a strong association with the Ni\~[n}o 3.4 index (an index that is sensitive to both central and eastern Pacific ENSO events) it would be fair to say that even if the location of tropical SSTs does cause the pattern to move slightly, this would represent only a small fraction of all PSA pattern events. In fact, the weak relationship identified between the PSA pattern and ENSO suggests that the pattern would be better conceptualized as preferred regional atmospheric response to various external (and internal) forcings.   In contrast to ENSO, the PSA pattern showed a very strong relationship to the SAM. This finding is consistent with the work of \citet{Ding2012}, who essentially suggests that the PSA patternis  Further work: Lagged composites for tropical drivers, PNA, more detailed account of PSA like Kosaka, SAM / PSA relationship (better Ding2012)