The relative contributions of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), long-term tropical Pacific variations, and the Arctic oscillation (AO) to the explained variance of U.S. precipitation and surface air temperature are investigated. The time variability of monthly precipitation in the tropical Pacific basin is separated into high-pass and low-pass filtered components. The leading EOFs of the high-pass and low-pass filtered data capture ENSO cycle–related interannual variability and ENSO-like interdecadal variability, respectively. The dominant mode of variability in the extratropics is the AO, which has been implicated in some of the secular variability of climate in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics. ENSO produces large, reasonably reproducible spatial and temporal shifts in tropical precipitation. The tropical interdecadal variability produces more subtle, but still significant, shifts in tropical precipitation that contribute significantly to the explained variance and to trends in the North... Abstract The relative contributions of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), long-term tropical Pacific variations, and the Arctic oscillation (AO) to the explained variance of U.S. precipitation and surface air temperature are investigated. The time variability of monthly precipitation in the tropical Pacific basin is separated into high-pass and low-pass filtered components. The leading EOFs of the high-pass and low-pass filtered data capture ENSO cycle–related interannual variability and ENSO-like interdecadal variability, respectively. The dominant mode of variability in the extratropics is the AO, which has been implicated in some of the secular variability of climate in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics. ENSO produces large, reasonably reproducible spatial and temporal shifts in tropical precipitation. The tropical interdecadal variability produces more subtle, but still significant, shifts in tropical precipitation that contribute significantly to the explained variance and to trends in the North...