Present weather and climate: Evolving conditions

Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States: A Report Prepared for the National Climate Assessment

Volumn , Issue , 2013, Pages 74-100

  Hoerling, Martin P ^a   Dettinger, Michael ^b   Wolter, Klaus ^c   Lukas, Jeff ^c   Eischeid, Jon ^c   Nemani, Rama ^d   Liebmann, Brant ^c   Kunkel, Kenneth E ^e   Kumar, Arun ^f  

^a EARTH SYSTEM RESEARCH LABORATORY   (United States)

^b U S GEOLOGICAL SURVEY   (United States)

^c University of Colorado ^*  (United States)

^d NASA HEADQUARTERS   (United States)

^e NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^f NOAA EARTH SYSTEM RESEARCH LABORATORY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84959350633     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.5822/978-1-61091-484-0_5     Document Type: Chapter

References (78)

1. Ababneh, L. 2008. Bristlecone pine paleoclimatic model for archeological patterns in the White Mountain of California. Quaternary International 188:9-78.
2. Alley, W. 1984. The Palmer Drought Severity Index: Limitations and assumptions. Journal of Climatology and Applied Meteorology 23:1100-1109.
3. Anderson, L. 2011. Holocene record of precipitation seasonality from lake calcite 18O in the central Rocky Mountains, United States. Geology 39:211-214.
4. Asmerom, Y., V. Polyak, S. Burns, and J. Rassmussen. 2007. Solar forcing of Holocene climate: New insights from a speleothem record, southwestern United States. Geology 35:1-4.
5. Bard, E., G. Raisbeck, F. Yiou, and J. Jouzel. 2000. Solar irradiance during the last millennium based on cosmogenic nucleides. Tellus 52B: 985-992.
6. Barnett, T. P., and D. W. Pierce. 2008. When will Lake Mead go dry? Water Resources Research 44: W03201, doi:10.1029/2007WR006704.
7. Barnett, T. P., and D. W. Pierce. 2009. Sustainable water deliveries from the Colorado River in a changing climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106:7334-7338.
8. Barnett, T. P., D. W. Pierce, H. Hidalgo, C. Bonfils, B. Santer, T. Das, G. Bala, et al. 2008. Human-induced changes in the hydrology of the western United States. Science 319:1080-1083, doi:10.1073/pnas.0812762106
9. Benson, L.V., 1999. Records of millennial-scale climate change from the Great Basin of the western United States. In Mechanisms of global climate change at millennial time scales, ed. P. Clark, R. Webb, and L. Keigwin, 203-225. Geophysical Monograph Series 112. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union.
10. Bonfils, C., B. D. Santer, D. W. Pierce, H. G. Hidalgo, G. Bala, T. Das, T.P. Barnett, et al. 2008. Detection and attribution of temperature changes in the mountainous western United States. Journal of Climate 21:6404-6424.
11. Bonnin, G. M., K. Maitaria, and M. Yekta. 2011. Trends in rainfall exceedances in the observed record in selected areas of the United States. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 46:344-353, doi:10.1111/j.1752-1688.2011.00603.x.
12. Cayan, D. R., S. A. Kammerdiener, M. D. Dettinger, J. M. Caprio, and D. H. Peterson. 2001. Changes in the onset of spring in the western United States. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 82:399-415.
13. Cayan, D. R., T. Das, D. W. Pierce, T. P. Barnett, M. Tyree, and A. Gershunov. 2010. Future dryness in the southwest US and the hydrology of the early 21st century drought. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107:21271-21276, doi:10.1073/pnas.0912391107.
14. Christensen, N. S., and D. P. Lettenmaier. 2007. A multimodel ensemble approach to assessment of climate change impacts on the hydrology and water resources of the Colorado River Basin. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 11:1417-1434.
15. Cook, E. R., C. Woodhouse, C. M. Eakin, D. M. Meko, and D. W. Stahle. 2004. Long-term aridity changes in the western United States. Science 306:1015-1018.
16. Cook, E. R., R. Seager, R. R. Heim, R. S. Vose, C. Herweijer, and C. Woodhouse. 2009. Mega-droughts in North America: Placing IPCC projections of hydroclimatic change in a long-term paleoclimate context. Journal of Quaternary Science 25:48-61, doi: 10.1002/jqs.1303.
17. Dai, A. 2011. Characteristics and trends in various forms of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) during 1900-2008. Journal of Geophysical Research 116: D12115, doi:10.1029/2010JD015541.
18. Daly, C. 2006. Guidelines for assessing the suitability of spatial climate data sets. International Journal of Climatology 26:707-721.
19. Daly, C., M. Halbleib, J. I. Smith, W. P. Gibson, M. K. Doggett, G. H. Taylor, J. Curtis, and P. A. Pasteris. 2008. Physiographically-sensitive mapping of temperature and precipitation across the conterminous United States. International Journal of Climatology 28:2031-2064.
20. Dettinger, M. D., and D. R. Cayan. 1995. Large-scale atmospheric forcing of recent trends toward early snowmelt runoff in California. Journal of Climate 8:606-623.
21. Fall, S., A. Watts, J. N. Gammon, E. Jones, D. Niyogi, J. Christy, and R. Pielke Sr. 2011. Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends. Journal of Geophysical Research 116: D14120.
22. Fritze, H., I. T. Stewart, and E. Pebesma. 2011. Shifts in western North American runoff regimes for the recent warm decades. Journal of Hydrometeorology 12:989-1006.
23. Fulp, T. 2005. How low can it go? Southwest Hydrology 4 (2):16-17, 28.
24. Gershunov, A., and T. P. Barnett. 1998. Interdecadal modulation of ENSO teleconnections. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 79:2715-2725.
25. Graumlich, L. J. 1993. A 1000-year record of temperature and precipitation in the Sierra Nevada. Quaternary Research 39:249-255.
26. Grissino-Mayer, H., 1996. A 2129-year reconstruction of precipitation for northwestern New Mexico, U.S.A. In Tree Rings, environment and humanity: Proceedings of the international conference, Tucson, Arizona, 17-21 May 1994, ed. J. S. Dean, D. M. Meko, and T. W. Swetnam, 191-204. Tucson, AZ: Radiocarbon, Dept. of Geosciences, University of Arizona.
27. Groisman, P. V., R. W. Knight, T. R. Karl, D. R. Easterling, B. Sun, and J. H. Lawrimore. 2004. Contemporary changes of the hydrological cycle over the contiguous United States: Trends derived from in situ observations. Journal of Hydrometeorology 5:64-85, doi: 10.1175/1525-7541.
28. Hidalgo, H. G., T. Das, M. D. Dettinger, D. R. Cayan, D. W. Pierce, T. P. Barnett, G. Bala, et al. 2009. Detection and attribution of stream flow timing changes to climate change in the western United States. Journal of Climate 22:3838-3855, doi:10.1175/2009JCLI2470.1.
29. Hirsch, R. M., and K. R. Ryberg. 2011. Has the magnitude of floods across the USA changed with global CO2 levels? Hydrological Sciences Journal 57:1-9, doi:10.1080/02626667.2011.621895.
30. Hoerling, M., J. Eischeid, and J. Perlwitz. 2010. Regional precipitation trends: Distinguishing natural variability from anthropogenic forcing. Journal of Climate 23:2131-2145.
31. Hoerling, M. P., and A. Kumar. 2003. The perfect ocean for drought. Science 299:691-694. Kahya, E., and J. A. Dracup. 1993. U.S. streamflow patterns in relation to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. Water Resources Research 29:2491-2503.
32. Knowles, N., M. D. Dettinger, and D. R. Cayan, 2006. Trends in snowfall versus rainfall in the western United States. Journal of Climate 19:4545-4559.
33. Kunkel, K. E., D. R. Easterling, K. Hubbard, and K. Redmond. 2004. Temporal variations in frost-free season in the United States: 1895-2000. Geophysical Research Letters 31: L03201, doi:10.1029/2003GL018624.
34. Kunkel, K. E., D. R. Easterling, K. Redmond, and K. Hubbard. 2003. Temporal variations of extreme precipitation events in the United States: 1895-2000. Geophysical Research Letters 30:1900-1903, doi:10.1029/2003GL018052.
35. Liverman, D. M., and R. W. Merideth, Jr. 2002. Climate and society in the U.S. Southwest: The context for a regional assessment. Climate Research 21:199-218.
36. MacDonald, G. M. 2007. Severe and sustained drought in Southern California and the West: Present conditions and insights from the past on causes and impacts. Quaternary International 173/174:87-100, doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2007.03.012.
37. MacDonald, G. M., and A. M. Tingstad. 2007. Multicentennial precipitation variability and drought occurrence in the Uinta Mountains region, Utah. Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research 39:549-555.
38. MacDonald, G.M., K. V. Kremenetski, and H. Hidalgo. 2008. Southern California and the perfect drought: Simultaneous prolonged drought in Southern California and the Sacramento and Colorado River systems. Quaternary International 188:11-23, doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2007.06.027.
39. MacDonald, G. M., D. W. Stahle, J. Villanueva Diaz, N. Beer, S. J. Busby, J. Cerano-Paredes, J. E. Cole, et al. 2008. Climate warming and twenty-first century drought in southwestern North America. EOS Transactions AGU 89:82.
40. Mann, M. E., Z. Zhang, M. K. Hughes, R. S. Bradley, S. K. Miller, S. Rutherford, and F. Ni. 2008. Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:13252-13257, doi:10.1073/pnas.0805721105.
41. McCabe, G. J., and D. M. Wolock. 2007. Warming may create substantial water supply shortages in the Colorado River Basin. Geophysical Research Letters 34: L22708, doi:10.1029/2007GL031764.
42. Meehl, G., C. Tibaldi, G. Walton, D. Easterling, and L. McDaniel. 2009. Relative increase of record high maximum temperature compared to record low minimum temperature in the US. Geophysical Research Letters 36: L23701, doi:10.1029/2009GL040736.
43. Meko, D. M. 2001. Reconstructed Sacramento River system runoff from tree rings. Report prepared for the California Department of Water Resources, July 2001.
44. Meko, D. M. 2008. Streamflow reconstruction, Rio Grande River at Otowi Ridge, 1450-2002. Prepared for the Rio Grande Basin Workshop, 30 May 2008, New Mexico State University Extension, Albuquerque, New Mexico. http://treeflow.info/riogr/riograndeotowinatural.txt.
45. Meko, D. M., and C. A. Woodhouse. 2005. Tree-ring footprint of joint hydrologic drought in Sacramento and Upper Colorado River Basins, western USA. Journal of Hydrology 308:196-213.
46. Meko, D. M., C. A. Woodhouse, C. A. Baisan, T. Knight, J. J. Lukas, M. K. Hughes, and M. W. Salzer. 2007. Medieval drought in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Geophysical Research Letters 34: L10705.
47. Menne, M. J., and C. N. Williams, Jr. 2009. Homogenization of temperature series via pairwise comparisons. Journal of Climate 22:1700-1717, doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2263.1.
48. Millar, C. I., J. C. King, R. D. Westfall, H. A. Alden, and D. L. Delany. 2006. Late Holocene forest dynamics, volcanism, and climate change at Whitewing Mountain and San Joaquin Ridge, Mono County, Sierra Nevada, CA, USA. Quaternary Research 66:273-287.
49. Milly, P. C. D., K. A. Dunne, and A. V. Vecchia. 2005. Global pattern of trends in streamflow and water availability in a changing climate. Nature 438:347-350.
50. Mote, P. W., A. F. Hamlet, M. P. Clark, and D. P. Lettenmaier. 2005. Declining mountain snow-pack in western North America. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 86:39-49.
51. Muhs, D. R., T. W. Stafford, J. B. Swinehart, S. D. Cowherd, S. A. Mahan, C. A. Bush, R. F. Madole, and P. B. Maat. 1997. Late Holocene eolian activity in the mineralogically mature Nebraska Sand Hills. Quaternary Research 48:162-176.
52. Ni, F., T. Cavazos, M. K. Hughes, A. C. Comrie, and G. Funkhouser, 2002. Cool-season precipitation in the southwestern USA since AD 1000: Comparison of linear and nonlinear techniques for reconstruction. International Journal of Climatology 22:1645-1662.
53. Palmer, W. C. 1965. Meteorological drought. Research Paper No. 45. Washington, DC: U.S. Weather Bureau.
54. Pederson, G. T., S. T. Gray, C. A. Woodhouse, J. L. Betancourt, D. B. Fagre, J. S. Littell, E. Watson, B. H. Luckman, and L. J. Graumlich. 2011. The unusual nature of recent snowpack declines in the North American Cordillera. Science 333:332-335, doi: 10.1126/science.1201570.
55. Pielke, R. Sr., N. Doesken, O. Bliss, T. Green, C. Chaffin, J. Salas, C. Woodhouse, J. Lukas, and K. Wolter. 2005. Drought 2002 in Colorado: An unprecedented drought or a routine drought? Pure and Applied Geophysics 162:1455-1479.
56. Pierce, D., T. Barnett, H. Hidalgo, T. Das, C. Bonfils, B. Santer, G. Bala, et al. 2008. Attribution of declining western US snowpack to human effects. Journal of Climate 21:6425-6444, doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2405.1.
57. Rajagopalan, B., K. Nowak, J. Prairie, M. Hoerling, B. Harding, J. Barsugli, A. Ray, and B. Udall. 2009. Water supply risk on the Colorado River: Can management mitigate? Water Resources Research 45: W08201, doi:10.1029/2008WR007652.
58. Ralph, F. M., M. D. Dettinger, A. White, D. Reynolds, D. Cayan, T. Schneider, R. Cifelli, et al. 2011. A vision of future observations for western US extreme precipitation events and flooding: Monitoring, prediction and climate. Report to the Western States Water Council, Idaho Falls.
59. Redmond, K. T., and R. W. Koch. 1991. Surface climate and streamflow variability in the western United States and their relationship to large scale circulation indices. Water Resources Research 27:2381-2399, doi:10.1029/91WR00690.
60. Regonda, S. K., B. Rajagopalan, M. Clark, and J. Pitlick. 2005. Seasonal cycle shifts in hydroclimatology over the western United States. Journal of Climate 18:372-384.
61. Roos, M. 1991. A trend of decreasing snowmelt runoff in Northern California. In Proceedings of the 59th Western Snow Conference, April 12-15, 1991, Juneau, Alaska, 29-36. Juneau, AK: Western Snow Conference.
62. Ropelewski, C. F., and M. S. Halpert. 1986. North American precipitation and temperature patterns associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Monthly Weather Review 114:2352-2362.
63. Routson, C. C., C. Woodhouse, and J. T. Overpeck. 2011. Second century megadrought in the Rio Grande headwaters, Colorado: How unusual was medieval drought? Geophysical Research Letters 38: L22703, doi:10.1029/2011GL050015.
64. Salzer, M. W., and K. F. Kipfmueller. 2005. Reconstructed temperature and precipitation on a millennial timescale from tree rings in the southern Colorado Plateau, USA. Climatic Change 70:465-487.
65. Salzer, M., M. Hughes, A. Bunn, and K. Kipfmueller. 2009. Recent unprecedented tree-ring growth in bristlecone pine at the highest elevations and possible causes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106:20348-20353.
66. Seager, R., R. Burgman, Y. Kushnir, A. Clement, E. R. Cook, N. Naik, and J. Miller. 2008. Tropical Pacific forcing of North American medieval megadroughts: Testing the concept with an atmosphere model forced by coral reconstructed SSTs. Journal of Climate 21:6175-6190.
67. Stahle, D. W., E. R. Cook, M. K. Cleaveland, M. D. Therrell, D. M. Meko, H. D. Grissino-Mayer, E. Watson, and B. H. Luckman. 2000. Tree-ring data document 16th century megadrought over North America. EOS Transactions AGU 81:121, doi:10.1029/00EO00076.
68. Stegner, W. 1987. The American West as living space. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
69. Stevens, M. B., J. F. González-Rouco, and H. Beltrami. 2008. North American climate of the last millennium: Underground temperatures and model comparison. Journal of Geophysical Research 113: F01008, doi: 10.1029/2006JF000705.
70. Stewart, I., D. Cayan, and M. Dettinger. 2005. Changes towards earlier streamflow timing across western North America. Journal of Climate 18:1136-1155.
71. Stine, S. 1994. Extreme and persistent drought in California and Patagonia during mediaeval time. Nature 369:546-549.
72. Tingstad, A. H., and G. M. MacDonald. 2010. Long-term relationships between ocean variability and water resources in northeastern Utah. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 46:987-1002.
73. Touchan, R., C. Woodhouse, D. Meko, and C. Allen. 2010. Millennial precipitation reconstruction for the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico, reveals changing drought signal. International Journal of Climatology 31:896-906.
74. Woodhouse, C.A., and P. M. Brown. 2001. Tree-ring evidence for Great Plains drought. Tree-Ring Research 57:89-103.
75. Woodhouse, C. A., 2003. A 431-year reconstruction of western Colorado snowpack. Journal of Climate 16:1551-1561.
76. Woodhouse, C. A., D. M. Meko, G. M. MacDonald, D. W. Stahle, and E. R. Cook. 2010. A 1,200-year perspective of 21st century drought in southwestern North America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107:21283-21288, doi:10.1073/pnas.0911197107.
77. Woodhouse, C. A., G. T. Pederson, and S. T. Gray. 2011. An 1800-year record of decadal-scale hydroclimatic variability in the Upper Arkansas River Basin from bristlecone pine. Quaternary Research 75:483-490, doi:10.1016/j.yqres.2010.12.007.
78. Yarnal, B., and H. F. Diaz. 1986. Relationships between extremes of the Southern Oscillation and the winter climate of the Anglo-American Pacific Coast. Journal of Climate 6:197-219.