THEORETICAL-ANALYSIS OF THE LATITUDINAL YEAR-TO-YEAR VARIABILITY OF THE SURFACE AIR-TEMPERATURE

The variability of the surface air temperature is described in frames of a simple stochastic model with the air-sea heat exchange. The synoptic fluctuations of the horizontal heat transport are considered as stochastic forcing. It is shown that the simplest treatment of this stochastic source statistical properties leads to the well-known diffusive parametrization of the average equator-to-pole heat transfer and well-known [3] linear relation between the year-to-year variance of the zonally averaged surface air temperature and the square of the mean meridional heat flux divergence. It is shown that in this stochastic model the coefficient in such empirical relation can be expressed in terms of the main characteristics of modern climate.