Multisensor analysis of teleconnection signals in relation to terrestrial precipitation and forest greenness in North and Central America

Identification of teleconnection patterns at a local scale is challenging, largely due to the coexistence of non-stationary and non-linear signals embedded within sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. This study investigates how the oceanic teleconnection signals affect the forested sites in the North and Central America based on mulitsensor data. These impacts were found to affect 20-40% of precipitation and 30-60% of vegetation. The non-linear spectral wavelet analysis showed that the terrestrial hydroecological responses of the Central America and Northeast sites are mostly affected by the Pacific Ocean (i.e. El-Nino Southern Oscillation and Madden-Julian Oscillation) and the Atlantic Ocean (i.e. North Atlantic Oscillation and tropical Atlantic) respectively, while the responses of the Northwest site are influenced by tropical Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In addition, it indicated the periodic high and consistent quasi-biennial to triennial low frequency signals between SST anomalies and terrestrial responses of the Northeast and Central America sites, whereas the periodic low frequency signals were only detected in the Northwest site.