Spatio-temporal structure of surface air temperature fluctuations in the Southern Urals
The analysis of the monthly average surface air temperatures for the 1940-2015 period is provided based on observations of a network of meteorological stations in the Southern Urals. The temperature series expansion into empirical orthogonal components (EOC) is used for the study of the spatiotemporal structure. The correlation analysis of the EOC for winter and summer with the main large-scale natural climate variability modes of the Northern hemisphere is carried out. The first leading EOC describes a positive temperature trend and makes the main contribution into the temperature variability. For the winter season, the leading mode is associated with North Atlantic oscillation. For summer, a significant contribution of the Atlantic multi-decadal fluctuation and East-Atlantic-Western-Russian index is revealed; this finding can be used to improve the forecast of climate change in the coming decades for the region under study. In general, the results indicate a significant impact of natural climatic variability on the temperature regime as well as a possible difficulty in isolating the anthropogenic component of climate change in the region.