Is the North Atlantic Oscillation the most important atmospheric pattern for precipitation in Europe?

Signatures of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are widely detected in climatic variability, particularly in the extratropical latitudes surrounding the North Atlantic Ocean. However, it is still controversial whether the NAO is the most important pattern of nonseasonal variability of atmospheric circulation related to precipitation over Europe. This paper is an attempt to contribute to this issue. The spatial modes of nonseasonal variability of monthly fields of mean sea level pressure (MSLP) over the northeastern Atlantic and western Europe and precipitation over Europe are investigated mainly by using principal component analysis. The relationships between the two fields are studied via canonical correlation analysis (CCA), The data sets used refer to the period from 1911 to 1990. The most important spatial mode of MSLP is the NAO pattern, its corresponding principal component being closely related to the NAO index. Interestingly however, the NAO pattern seems to be responsible only for the second empirical orthogonal function in precipitation, while the most important spatial mode of precipitation corresponds to the third EOF of MSLP (North Sea pattern). Furthermore, the second EOF of MSLP (Scandinavian pattern) is highly associated with the third EOF of precipitation. Significant pairs of canonical patterns between the MSLP and precipitation fields obtained from canonical correlation analysis are coherent with the conclusions above. These results can potentially be used to assess possible changes of precipitation over Europe due to increasing greenhouse gases based on the variability of MSLP simulated by general circulation models.