The northern annular mode: More zonal symmetric than the southern annular mode

Fan (2007) recently documented the zonal asymmetry of the Antarctic oscillation (AAO) in the austral winter. In this research, the zonal asymmetry of the northern annular mode, or the Arctic oscillation (AO), in the interannual variability is studied for the boreal winter. It is shown that there is zonal asymmetry of the AO as well, similar to the case of the Antarctic oscillation (AAO). However, the zonal asymmetry of the AO is considerably weaker than that of the AAO. This is far beyond the speculation, since the zonal asymmetry of the geography is larger in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere. The Western and Eastern Hemispheres portions of the AO are correlated at 0.54 for 1959–1998, comparing with 0.23 for the case of the AAO. The authors also discussed the physical reason for this inter-hemispheric difference, and partly attributed it to the El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle which may be represented by the SO index. It is indicated that the SO associated sea-level pressure (SLP) patterns are more zonal symmetric in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere.