Recurrent daily OLR patterns in the Southern Africa / Southwest Indian Ocean region, implications for South African rainfall and teleconnections

International audienceA cluster analysis of daily OLR anomalies from 1979 to 2002 over the Southern Africa / Southwest Indian Ocean region for the November-February season reveals seven robust and statistically well separated recurrent patterns of large-scale organized convection. Among them are three regimes indicative of well defined tropical-temperate interactions linking the hinterland parts of Southern Africa to the mid-latitudes of the Southwest Indian ocean. Preferred transitions show a tendency for an eastward propagation of these systems. Analysis of daily rainfall records for South Africa shows that six of the OLR regimes are associated with spatially coherent and significant patterns of enhanced or reduced daily rainfall over the country. Atmospheric anomalies from the NCEP / DOE II reanalysis dataset show that the OLR regimes are associated with either regional or near-global adjustments of the atmospheric circulation, the three regimes representative of Tropical-Temperate interactions being in particular related to a well-defined wave structure encompassing the subtropical and temperate latitudes, featuring strong vertical anomalies and strong poleward export of momentum in the lee of the location of the cloud-band. The time-series of OLR regimes seasonal frequency are correlated to distinctive anomaly patterns in the global Sea-Surface-Temperature field, among which are shown to be those corresponding to El Nino and La Nina conditions. The spatial signature of ENSO's influence is related to the combination of an increased / decreased frequency of these regimes. It is shown in particular that the well-known “dipole” in convection anomalies contrasting Southern Africa and the Southwest Indian Ocean during ENSO events arises as an effect of seasonal averaging and is therefore not valid at the synoptic scale. This study also provides a framework to better understand the observed non-linearities between ENSO and the seasonal convection and rainfall anomalies over the region