A Bayesian Approach to Atmospheric Circulation Regime Assignment

The standard approach when studying atmospheric circulation regimes and their dynamics is to use a hard, categorical, regime assignment. That is, each atmospheric state is assigned to the regime it is closest to in distance. However, this may not always be the most appropriate approach as the regime assignment may be affected by small deviations in the distance to the regimes due to noise. To mitigate this we develop a probabilistic regime assignment using Bayes theorem. Bayes theorem tells us that the probability of a regime given the data can be determined by combining climatological likelihood with prior information. The regime probabilities at time t can be used to inform the prior probabilities at time t+1, which then is used to sequentially update the regime probabilities. We apply this approach to both reanalysis data and a seasonal hindcast ensemble incorporating knowledge of the transition probabilities between regimes. Furthermore, making use of the signal present within the ensemble to better inform the prior probabilities allows for identifying more pronounced interannual variability. The signal within the interannual variability of wintertime North Atlantic circulation regimes is assessed using both a categorical and regression approach, with the strongest signals found during very strong El Ni\~no years.