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.[1] Decadal changes in surface air temperature (SAT) variability and cold surge characteristics over Northeast Asia during late winter (January-March) are analyzed for the past three decades. Power spectrum analysis of SAT reveals that the low-frequency variabilities with a period longer than 10 days are significantly enhanced, while the high-frequency variabilities with a period shorter than 10 days are weakened in the 1980s and 2000s. Moreover, cold surges were stronger and lasted longer during the 1980s and 2000s compared to those that occurred in the 1990s. Here, we propose that large-scale atmospheric conditions manifested by a different phase of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) provide preconditioning for a cold surge event, which showed a prominent decadal fluctuation. The more (less) frequent strong and long-lasting cold surge occurrences in the 1980s and 2000s (1990s) are preceded by the more dominant negative (positive) phase of the AO. Lag-composite analyses for cold surge events categorized by the AO phases indicate that stronger and longer-lasting cold air advection dominates at the lower-level, when upper-level wave train and coastal trough are developed over East Asia under the strong negative AO phase. These results suggest that the decadal changes in SAT variability and cold surge characteristics are strongly associated with the decadal changes in the phase distribution of the AO.

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The present study examines the impacts of snow initialization on surface air temperature by a number of ensemble seasonal predictability experiments using the NCAR Community Atmosphere Model version 3 (CAM3) AGCM with and without snow initialization. The study attempts to isolate snow signals on surface air temperature. In this preliminary study, any effects of variations in sea ice extent are ignored and do not explicitly identify possible impacts on atmospheric circulation. The Canadian Meteorological Center (CMC) daily snow depth analysis was used in defining initial snow states, where anomaly rescaling was applied in order to account for the systematic bias of the CAM3 snow depth with respect to the CMC analysis. Two suites of seasonal (3 months long) ensemble hindcasts starting at each month in the colder part of the year (September–April) with and without the snow initialization were performed for 12 recent years (1999–2010), and the predictability skill of surface air temperature was estimated. Results show that considerable potential predictability increases up to 2 months ahead can be attained using snow initialization. Relatively large increases are found over East Asia, western Russia, and western Canada in the later part of this period. It is suggested that the predictability increases are sensitive to the strength of snow–albedo feedback determined by given local climate conditions; large gains tend to exist over the regions of strong snow–albedo feedback. Implications of these results for seasonal predictability over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere and future direction for this research are discussed.