The Annual ICES Ocean Climate Status Summary 2002/2003

In most areas of the North Atlantic during 2002 temperature and salinity were higher than the long-term average.

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index switched back to negative conditions during the winter preceding 2001, having recovered in the previous four years from the extreme negative value of 1996, which had brought to an end a period of extreme and persistent positive NAO index in the late 1980s/early 1990s. The 2002 NAO index showed a return to positive values which for the winter as a whole were not extreme, although individual months exhibited extreme and opposing sea-level pressure anomaly patterns.