The interdecadal changes in climate under accelerating global warming have a profound impact on various countries in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Using ERA5 reanalysis data, the interdecadal changes of Rossby wave energy propagation (RWEP) pathways and their impacts are examined in the present work. The results demonstrate that the NH means of 500 hPa geopotential height anomalies vary with large interdecadal trends that keep in step with global warming, exhibiting a negative-to-positive phase transition from period I (1950/51–1996/97) to period II (1997/98–2024/25). Pronounced interdecadal eastward shifts occur systematically in interannual variabilities of apparent wave sources, which correspondingly result in large interdecadal changes of RWEP pathways in regions from the northeast Atlantic to Eurasia and from the northeast Pacific to North America. Significant interannual surface air temperature anomalies with extremes of around ±5 °C are induced by circulation variations in regions around these pathways, facilitating possible occurrences of climate extremes in Eurasia and North America with different spatial patterns between period II and period I.
Observations from the Little Bunker
Last updated: February 05, 2026 01:04 AM
Atmospheric CO₂
428.4 ppm
+16.6
ppm/year
Atmospheric CH₄
1940.59 ppb
+-0.24
ppb/year
Global Temperature
+1.48 °C
Peak: +1.73°C
World Population
8.1 billion
+67
million/year