Importance of a vertically tilting structure for energizing the North Atlantic Oscillation

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a prominent mode of atmospheric variability that influences weather and climate, including the occurrence of extreme events, over a large part of Europe and Northeastern America. The NAO has been considered to be maintained primarily by migratory weather disturbances and to have a deep structure with no vertical tilt. A careful inspection nonetheless reveals that the associated anomalies do exhibit a subtle vertical tilt, but its dynamical implications are still unknown. Here we show that this vertical tilt is of vital dynamical significance for the wintertime NAO. We find, using atmospheric reanalysis data, that the tilted anomalies transport heat across the pronounced thermal gradient associated with a background westerly jetstream, advecting air from the cooler North America and Greenland to the warmer Atlantic, thereby acting to reinforce NAO’s thermal anomalies. The resultant conversion of potential energy from the background state is a larger energy source for maintaining the NAO than the feedback from migratory disturbances. Our findings thus uncover a fundamental mechanism of the NAO dynamics, with implications for the improvement of seasonal predictions for the Euro-Atlantic climate and the representation of the NAO variability in climate models.