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HOME >Climate System Monitoring > Monthly Highlights on the Climate System

Monthly Highlights on the Climate System

'Monthly Highlights on the Climate System' has been issued in PDF format since March 2007 as a monthly bulletin focusing on the monthly highlights of the monitoring results.


Highlights in February 2024

- Oceanic indicators suggest that ongoing El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific have already peaked and are now gradually weakening (see El Niño Outlook updated on 11 March 2024).
- Monthly mean temperatures were significantly above normal in eastern/western Japan and Okinawa/Amami, and were above normal in northern Japan.
- Convective activity was enhanced over the tropical central Pacific and the western to central parts of the Indian Ocean, and suppressed from the eastern Indian Ocean to Indonesia, and from the tropical South America to the western Africa.
- In the 500-hPa height field, the polar vortex in the Northern Hemisphere split with positive anomalies from Western to Central Siberia and negative anomalies to the northwest of Europe and over the eastern part of Eastern Siberia. Wave trains were dominant over the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes with positive anomalies over northeastern North America, from northwestern Northern Africa to southern Europe, from Japan to the east, and negative anomalies to the west of the USA and over southern Western Siberia.
- The subtropical jet stream over Eurasia shifted southward from its normal position. The westerly jet stream shifted northward from Japan to the east, and southward from North America to the east, respectively, from its normal positions.


Full version (PDF)

The descriptions from May-2011 to April-2021 issue are based on the former climatological normal (1981-2010 average).
In the descriptions until April-2011 issue, 1979-2004 average is used as climatological normal unless otherwise stated.
The descriptions until January-2014 issue are based on the JRA-25/JCDAS datasets.
The descriptions from February-2014 to April-2023 issue are based on the JRA-55 reanalysis.

Figures and Tables

Notice: Products based on JRA-3Q were updated to those with improved quality in terms of tropical cyclone analysis. OLR-related products from January 1991 are based on NOAA CPC Blended OLR (CBO).



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Tokyo Climate Center, Climate Prediction Division.
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