Relationship between the Brightness Temperature Anomalies of the Lower Troposphere and the Climate Indices in the Southern Urals

Abstract

The average monthly temperature of the lower troposphere (TLT) retrieved from satellite sensing data for 1979–2017 in the Southern Urals is analyzed. The method of decomposition of the temperature series into empirical orthogonal components (EOCs) was used to study the spatiotemporal TLT structure. Correlation analysis of the identified EOCs for winter and summer seasons and the indices of large-scale modes of natural climatic variability in the Northern Hemisphere is carried out. The first leading EOC, which characterizes a negative temperature trend, produces the main contribution to the overall variability. In winter, the leading mode is associated with the North Atlantic oscillation. In summer, a significant contribution of the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation and the index of the Arctic sea ice concentration anomalies was revealed. This may be used to improve the reliability of forecasting the regional climate change in the coming decades. The results suggest that the natural climatic variability has a considerable effect on the temperature regime and that it might be difficult to isolate the anthropogenic component of climate change in the studied region.