Recent studies have indicated the importance of fall climate forcings and teleconnections in influencing the climate of the northern mid- to high latitudes. Here, we present some exploratory analyses using observational data and seasonal hindcasts, with the aim of highlighting the potential of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) as a driver of climate variability during boreal late fall and early winter (November and December) in the North Atlantic–European sector, and motivating further research on this relatively unexplored topic. The atmospheric ENSO teleconnection in November and December is reminiscent of the east Atlantic pattern and distinct from the well-known arching extratropical Rossby wave train found from January to March. Temperature and precipitation over Europe in November are positively correlated with the Niño-3.4 index, which suggests a potentially important ENSO climate impact during late fall. In particular, the ENSO-related temperature anomaly extends over a much larger area than during the subsequent winter months. We discuss the implications of these results and pose some research questions.

We gratefully acknowledge the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)–National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Reanalysis 1 (R-1), ERA-Interim, E-Obs, CRUTS, Hadley Centre Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature dataset (HadISST), and ECMWF Sys4 hindcasts datasets. MPK, CL, and SS are partially supported by the Research Council of Norway’s Klimaforsk program (Project 255027), IHB by the Croatian Science Foundation (Project 2831), and IB and JG-S by the Spanish MINECO-funded DANAE project (CGL2015-68342-R). Comments from Dr. M. A. Alexander (editor) and three reviewers have helped to improve this article.

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