Maintenance mechanisms of the Scandinavian teleconnection pattern and its possible impact on the Eurasian climate are investigated on the basis of long‐term monthly data. Its upstream portion over the North Atlantic is forced and maintained by feedback forcing from transient eddies migrating along the nearby storm track, with an additional contribution from incoming Rossby wave activity from further upstream. The primary anomaly centre over the Scandinavian Peninsula and the downstream portion of the pattern manifest themselves basically as Rossby waves propagating towards central Siberia and east Asia, under the modest feedback forcing from transient eddies. The pattern shows apparent seasonality in its dynamical properties, including the wave‐train orientation and wavelength, under the seasonally varying transient‐eddy feedback forcing and waveguide structure for Rossby waves. In cold seasons, the positive phase of the pattern causes cold‐air accumulation over a vast area extending from western Siberia to the regions around Lake Baikal and Lake Balkhash, while giving rise to decreased precipitation over northeastern Europe, western Siberia and some of the Arctic coastal regions. The pattern also changes the North Atlantic sea surface temperature differently between autumn and winter. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society

A pre‐existing anticyclonic anomaly over Scandinavia/western Russia played a crucial role in the persistent low temperature event over southern China in January 2008. This anticyclonic anomaly extended eastward along the arctic coast of the Eurasian continent, and then induced the persistent low temperature over southern China. Considering that anticyclonic anomalies over Scandinavia/western Russia rarely extended eastward to central Siberia, the simultaneous presence of this feature along with the vigorous Rossby wave propagation along the African‐Asian jet stream is found to be a fundamental factor in the occurrence of the persistent event. Copyright © 2011 Royal Meteorological Society

Northeast China cold vortex (NCCV) circulation associated with a blocking-type circulation over the Yakutsk/Okhotsk (YO) region brings persistent cool weather over Northeast China from May to mid-June and often causes a considerable reduction of local crop production. This study investigated the dynamic features of the YO-NCCV event on intraseasonal time scale and its relation with climate background circulation through analyzing two typical cases of YO-NCCV events. The first event (E1, from 25 May to 4 June, 2008) selected in this study was a long-lived (12 days) case, while the second event (E2, 16–18 May, 1972) was a short-lived one (only 3 days). Though two typical YO-NCCV events both developed from the southeastward movement of the polar high potential vorticity (PV) air, they showed different life cycle features. In the E1, the formation of the NCCV circulation was associated with the poleward intrusion of two low-PV tongues over the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Ural Mountains. The low-frequency Rossby waves propagating from the Scandinavia Peninsula along the westerly to Northeast China mainly contributed to the maintenance of the NCCV circulation. In contrast, for the E2, the low-PV tongue over the Ural Mountains was absent and the PV field over Eurasian continent exhibited a synoptic wave feature. The transient eddy feedback forcing (TEFF) anomalies contributed greatly to the formation and development of the YO-NCCV circulation. From the climatic view, the circulation anomalies associated with the E1 may be regarded as an intensive development of the climatological mean eddy field on the intraseasonal time scale. Results also show that the YO-NCCV event, among the four main types of NCCV event, was most closely related to the negative phase of western Pacific (WP) pattern.