Detection and attribution of temperature changes in the mountainous Western United States
Céline Bonfils,Benjamin D. Santer,David W. Pierce,Hugo G. Hidalgo,Govindasamy Bala,Tapash Das,Tim P. Barnett,Daniel R. Cayan,Daniel R. Cayan,Charles Doutriaux,Andrew W. Wood,Art Mirin,Toru Nozawa +12 more
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this paper, a rigorous detection and attribution analysis is performed to determine the causes of the late winter/early spring changes in hydrologically relevant temperature variables over mountain ranges of the western United States.Abstract:
Large changes in the hydrology of the western United States have been observed since the mid-twentieth century. These include a reduction in the amount of precipitation arriving as snow, a decline in snowpack at low and midelevations, and a shift toward earlier arrival of both snowmelt and the centroid (center of mass) of streamflows. To project future water supply reliability, it is crucial to obtain a better understanding of the underlying cause or causes for these changes. A regional warming is often posited as the cause of these changes without formal testing of different competitive explanations for the warming. In this study, a rigorous detection and attribution analysis is performed to determine the causes of the late winter/early spring changes in hydrologically relevant temperature variables over mountain ranges of the western United States. Natural internal climate variability, as estimated from two long control climate model simulations, is insufficient to explain the rapid increase in...read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Selecting global climate models for regional climate change studies
TL;DR: Evidence is shown that the superiority of the multimodel ensemble average (MM) to any 1 individual model, already found in global studies examining the mean climate, is true in this regional study that includes measures of variability as well.
Journal ArticleDOI
Surface temperature lapse rates over complex terrain: Lessons from the Cascade Mountains
TL;DR: In this article, a simple runoff model was used to compare seasonal and diurnal variability of lapse rates in the two data sets, showing that lapse rates smallest (2.5 −3.5°C km −1 ) in late summer minimum temperatures, and largest (6.5 -7.5 cm km − 1 ) in spring maximum temperatures.
Journal ArticleDOI
The push and pull of climate change causes heterogeneous shifts in avian elevational ranges
Morgan W. Tingley,Morgan W. Tingley,Michelle S. Koo,Craig Moritz,Craig Moritz,Andrew C. Rush,Andrew C. Rush,Steven R. Beissinger,Steven R. Beissinger +8 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that over the past century, increasing temperature pushed species upslope while increased precipitation pulled them downslope, resulting in range shifts that were heterogeneous within species and among regions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Detection and attribution of climate change: a regional perspective.
Peter A. Stott,Nathan P. Gillett,Gabriele C. Hegerl,David J. Karoly,Dáithí A. Stone,Xuebin Zhang,Francis W. Zwiers +6 more
TL;DR: This paper reviewed the evidence showing significant human-induced changes in regional temperatures, and for the effects of external forcings on changes in the hydrological cycle, the cryosphere, circulation changes, oceanic changes, and changes in extremes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Detection and Attribution of Streamflow Timing Changes to Climate Change in the Western United States
Hugo G. Hidalgo,Tapash Das,Michael D. Dettinger,Michael D. Dettinger,Daniel R. Cayan,Daniel R. Cayan,David W. Pierce,Tim P. Barnett,Govindasamy Bala,Arthur A. Mirin,Andrew W. Wood,Céline Bonfils,B. D. Santer,Toru Nozawa +13 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply formal detection and attribution techniques to investigate the nature of observed shifts in the timing of streamflow in the western United States, which manifest themselves in the form of more rain and less snow, in reductions in the snow water contents, and in earlier snowmelt and associated advances in streamflow "center" timing.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The NCEP/NCAR 40-Year Reanalysis Project
Eugenia Kalnay,Masao Kanamitsu,Robert Kistler,William D. Collins,D.G. Deaven,L. S. Gandin,M. Iredell,Suranjana Saha,Glenn H. White,John S. Woollen,Yuejian Zhu,Muthuvel Chelliah,Wesley Ebisuzaki,Wayne Higgins,John E. Janowiak,Kingtse C. Mo,Chester F. Ropelewski,Julian X. L. Wang,Ants Leetmaa,Richard W. Reynolds,Roy L. Jenne,Dennis Joseph +21 more
TL;DR: The NCEP/NCAR 40-yr reanalysis uses a frozen state-of-the-art global data assimilation system and a database as complete as possible, except that the horizontal resolution is T62 (about 210 km) as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon production
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify a robust, recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the midlatitude North Pacific basin over the past century, the amplitude of this climate pattern has varied irregularly at interannual-to-interdecadal timescales.
Journal ArticleDOI
Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity
Anthony L. Westerling,Anthony L. Westerling,Hugo G. Hidalgo,Daniel R. Cayan,Daniel R. Cayan,Thomas W. Swetnam +5 more
TL;DR: It is shown that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons.
Journal ArticleDOI
Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management?
Paul C.D. Milly,Julio L. Betancourt,Malin Falkenmark,Robert M. Hirsch,Dennis P. Lettenmaier,Ronald J. Stouffer +5 more
TL;DR: Climate change undermines a basic assumption that historically has facilitated management of water supplies, demands, and risks and threatens to derail efforts to conserve and manage water resources.
Journal ArticleDOI
A simple hydrologically based model of land surface water and energy fluxes for general circulation models
TL;DR: In this paper, a generalization of the single soil layer variable infiltration capacity (VIC) land surface hydrological model previously implemented in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) general circulation model (GCM) is described.