Interactions between teleconnections

Dipoles represent a class of teleconnections or long range spatio-temporal dependencies in climate data characterized by anomalies of opposite polarity at two locations at the same time. This dipole phenomenon has been known to occur for more than a century and the dipoles are crucial as they impact climate changes throughout the globe. For example, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is responsible for remote climate variations like temperature changes, increased rainfall, thunderstorms, tropical cyclones and droughts. Despite the importance of these dipole teleconnections for predicting regional climate anomalies and severe hydro-meteorological events, they have so far been mainly studied in isolation, and interactions between dipoles have been considered to be weak. In this paper, we study the interactions between the different pressure dipoles by examining the dipole activity of four major dipoles during the three phases of the ENSO namely El Niño, La Niña and neutral. Our results show significantly different dipole characteristics during the three phases.