Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Characterizing Temperature Variability States Across Southern South America And Associated Synoptic-Scale Meteorological Patterns, Judah Adam Detzer

Dissertations and Theses

The aim of this thesis is to understand spatiotemporal temperature variability in southern South America by identifying overarching temperature variability states and their associated synoptic-scale meteorological patterns. Further, the temporal frequency of occurrence of those temperature variability states is investigated as is the role of recurrent low-frequency modes of climate variability (El Niño Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode) on temperature variability. K-means cluster analysis is used to group all months during the period 1980-2015 into four primary categories for summer and winter separately. Monthly maps of temperature anomalies are provided as input to the k-means algorithm and the …