With the correct intermediate manifold, those of AMO and PDO are nearly indistinguishable. The ocean response is subtle — AMO has the basin-wide slow response, whereas PDO doesn’t, and both have a similar LTE modulation as shown in the middle-right panel below.

This is not a teleconnection but a common-mode forcing manifold each with a distinct response.

https://github.com/pukpr/gem-lte-core – experiments/Feb2026

All the quads in the global SST grid follow from these two as seeded values and with NINO4, which seems to have more of a split winding character than PDO – see experiments/Oct2026_layer_ir