20 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Are snowfall totals independent from one winter to the next?
In some regions, there is a relatively high degree of correlation between subsequent years of precipitation (and snowfall). This is called autocorrelation. These tend to be coupled with multi-year oscillations in sea surface temperature like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, El Nino, etc. In other regions where weather is less coupled to these oscillations, precipitation variability is more random.
Here is a link[1] to a global map that shows how tightly correlated precipitation between subsequent years is (panel a, from this paper[2]). Deep red = substantial positive autocorrelation, a wet year is likely to be followed by a wet year. Deep green = substantial negative autocorrelation, that is, a wet year one year is likely to result in a dry year the next. I see in your region, there is not a strong autocorrelation, so for you I think it's fair to say that interannual variability in precipitation is fairly random.
1: https://www.mdpi.com/water/water-11-02092/article_deploy/html/images/water-11-02092-g001.png
2: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/11/10/2092
Edit: Here's a better paper[3]than the one cited above discussing lagged autocorrelation.
3: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1705349115
Comment by ViskerRatio at 31/01/2024 at 04:48 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It seems like they're only checking the correlation for a single year interval, potentially missing periodic features on a longer time frame. Is there any particular reason a region can't repeat its weather features on, say, a three-year sequence rather than a single year sequence?
