Impacts of the NAO

The North Atlantic Oscillation has a large climatic influence on the North Atlantic ocean and surrounding land masses. It is a major controlling factor in basic meteorological variables such as surface wind, temperature and precipitation which have large socio-economic impacts on energy, agriculture, industry, traffic and human health throughout the whole of Europe and eastern North America.

Early in this century, scientists aware of the NAO also became interested in its socio-economic impacts (Meinardus, 1905). When more recently the NAO came into the focus of scientific work again, a number of studies considered the influence of this large scale variability pattern on local meteorological quantities such as seasonal mean precipitation, temperature and wind velocity (e.g. Wallace and Gutzler, 1981; Deser and Blackmon, 1993; Hurrell, 1995; Rogers, 1990; Malberg and Bökens, 1997; Ulbrich and Christof, 1999). Some of the previous studies on NAO socioeconomic and ecological impacts include:

• Koslowski et al., 1994, 1999 on the freezing-periods in the Baltic sea, affecting opening times of the harbours
• Post et al.,1997 on growing season length in Scandinavia
• Meinardus, 1905; Kettlewell, 1999 on wheat quality and production in northern Europe
• The WASA-Group, 1998 on wave heights and extreme storm events in the northeast Atlantic
• Fromentin and Planque, 1996; LaRoche, 1997 on North Atlantic plankton and fish populations
• The NAO influence on Middle Eastern Climate

• Hurrell, J.W., 1995: Decadal trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation and relationships to regional temperature and precipitation. Science 269, 676-679.