Relationships between sea surface temperatures and streamflows across the Cordillera de los Andes

FLAMENCO, E.; VILLALBA, R.

Foz do Iguaçu, Brasil

Conferencia; 8 International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography; 2006

INPE

1. INTRODUCTION Variations in ocean circulation markedly affect atmospheric conditions in the adjacent marine regions and in the surrounding lands. These changes in the ocean-atmosphere conditions can, in turn, alter the patterns of atmospheric circulation at hemispheric scale, creating a series of anomalies at global scale through teleconnections. Some modes of oceanatmosphere variability, such as ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation), NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) and PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation), are associated with environmental changes in different regions of our planet. Previous studies in Argentina showed that variations in the spatial patterns of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) affected precipitation fields, and indirectly, the discharge of the Paraná and Uruguary rivers (Mechoso e Iribarren, 1992; Valdés et al., 1999; Berri et al. 1997).