The Fairbanks, Alaska, and Pittsburgh, PA, Weather Connection

The winter season, defined as October to approximately March, has been analyzed to determine any patterns between weather systems in Fairbanks, AK, and Pittsburgh, PA.  The goal was to relate warming or cooling of an air mass in one area of the country to warming or cooling of an air mass further away.  Teleconnections provides evidence of patterns between weather systems at widely separated points for a given season.  The Pacific North American Pattern, or PNA, occurs every month with the exceptions of June and July.  This pattern has related weather patterns over the Aleutian Islands to weather patterns over the southeastern United States.  For example, it has been shown that if there is warming over the Aleutian Islands there will also be warming over the southeastern United States. 

When temperature departures were greater than 15 degrees from normal in Fairbanks, AK, temperature data from Pittsburgh was looked at for the same day and then five days later (Figure 1).  This was done to determine if the same weather patterns occur simultaneously or if there is a lag time between these locations.  Typically, the same climate that affects Alaska should be experienced by Pittsburgh five days later.  However, there were many winters where Pittsburgh did not observe any where close to the amount of warming that Alaska experienced.  In fact, when Alaska experienced a great amount of warming Pittsburgh did not experience this same warming trend. 

Figure 1:  Temperature data for when departures of 15^o F above normal occurred in Fairbanks, AK, compared with Pittsburgh, PA, that same day and five days later for

the winter seasons of 1993 to 2003.   

In our study, we did not find any significant pattern between weather systems for Fairbanks and Pittsburgh.  However, the following figures show a slight trend towards Pittsburgh observing the opposite climate that Fairbanks experiences on the same day. 

Figure 2:  Departures for the winter season of 1993 to 1994.

  Figure 3:  Departures for the winter season of 1999 to 2000.

 Figure 4:  Departures for the winter season of 2002 to 2003.