Winter '12 / '13 - Arctic Oscillation: Meteorological Winter/s Mid-point

Not sure what if anything it means but here's the state of the AO at the mid-point of meteorological winter during its 64 year period-of-record.



Blue line is the observed AO on 15-JAN.

Red line is a 9-point binomial filter.  The filter removes noise from the signal to highlight trends.

Yellow line is an 11-year moving average.

The 15-JAN-13 AO (-0.646) ranks 26th (41th percentile).

Same idea for AO/s sister...the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

The 15-JAN-13 NAO (0.011) ranks 26th (41th percentile).

Three things to note...
1)  The highly variable AO index on D+45 compared to its sister index...then NAO.
2)  The 11-year moving average between 1960 and1980 is negative...followed by a 30-year period were the average is above zero.
3)  This season/s mid-winter AO and NAO values are slightly below normal for all mid-winter values during the period-of-record (Z = -0.207 and Z = -0.045, respectively).