Year-to-year variability in summertime temperature has a large impact on drought, wildfire, and extreme heat across the Western United States. In our study, we find strong evidence in both models and observations linking the leading pattern of Western US summertime temperature variability to soil moisture anomalies in the preceding spring.
Our results suggest that antecedent soil moisture conditions and subsequent land–atmosphere interactions can cause distal temperature anomalies and impart predictability at time scales longer than one season! This teleconnection-like behavior of soil moisture anomalies in the Western US is something we hope to explore further in model experiments… stay tuned!
Read our paper in Journal of Climate here: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/37/13/JCLI-D-23-0716.1.xml
Lily N. Zhang 
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