• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.721-733
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• 2009

A pattern of tropical cyclone (TC) movement in the western North Pacific area was studied using the empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and the best track data from 1951 to 2007. The independent variable used in this study was defined as the frequency of tropical cyclone passage in 5 by 5 degree grid. The $1^{st}$, $2^{nd}$ and $3^{rd}$ modes were the east-west, north-south and diagonal variation patterns. Based on the time series of each component, the signs of first and second mode changed in 1997 and 1991, respectively, which seems to be related to the fact that the passage frequency was higher in the South China Sea for 20 years before 1990s, and recent 20 years in the East Asian area. When the eigen vectors were negative values in the first and second modes and TC moves into the western North Pacific, TC was formed mainly at the east side relatively compared to the case of the positive eigen vectors. The first mode seems to relate to the pressure pattern at the south of Lake Baikal, the second mode the variation pattern around $30^{\circ}N$, and the third mode the pressure pattern around Japan. The first mode was also closely related to the ENSO and negatively related to the $Ni\tilde{n}o$-3.4 index in the correlation analysis with SST anomalies.