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Folders: ROOT > ScienceBase Catalog > USGS National Research Program > USGS National Research Program Projects > Predict the Variability and Recent Changes in the Hydrologic Cycle to Natural and Human-Induced Climatic Influences ( Show direct descendants )

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The U.S. Geological Survey, Multi Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) uses hazards science to improve resiliency of communities to natural disasters including earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, landslides, floods and coastal erosion. The project engages emergency planners, businesses, universities, government agencies, and others in preparing for major natural disasters. The project also helps to set research goals and provides decision-making information for loss reduction and improved resiliency. The first public product of the MHDP was the ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario published in May 2008. This detailed depiction of a hypothetical magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in southern California served...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Gershunov A., Cayan, D., and Retournaz, B., 2010, California Heat Waves with Impacts on Wine Grapes, in Pavia, E.G., Sheinbaum, J., and Candela, J., eds., The Ocean, The Wine, and The Valley: The Lives of Antoine Badan: Lulu Press, p. 205-223, ISBN 978-0-557-94026-4.
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Major, D.C., Omojola, A., Dettinger, M., Hanson, R., and Sanchez-Rodriguez, R., 2011, Climate change, water and wastewater in 2, in Rosenzweig, C., Solecki, W., Hammer, S., and Mehrotra, S., eds., Climate Change and Cities--First Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network: Cambridge University Press, p.113-143.
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
With a new automated precipitation collector we measured a remarkable decrease of 51‰ in the hydrogen isotope ratio (δ 2H) of precipitation over a 60-minute period during the landfall of an extratropical cyclone along the California coast on 21 March 2005. The rapid drop in δ 2H occurred as precipitation generation transitioned from a shallow to a much deeper cloud layer, in accord with synoptic-scale ascent and deep “seeder-feeder” precipitation. Such unexpected δ 2H variations can substantially impact widely used isotope-hydrograph methods. From extreme δ 2H values of −26 and −78‰, we calculate precipitation temperatures of 9.7 and −4.2°C using an adiabatic condensation isotope model, in good agreement with temperatures...
Even in heavily engineered river systems, climate still governs flood variability and thus still drives many levee breaks and geomorphic changes. We assemble a 155-year record of levee breaks for a major California river system to find that breaks occurred in 25% of years during the 20th Century. A relation between levee breaks and river discharge is present that sets a discharge threshold above which most levee breaks occurred. That threshold corresponds to small floods with recurrence intervals of ∼2–3 years. Statistical analysis illustrates that levee breaks and peak discharges cycle (broadly) on a 12–15 year time scale, in time with warm-wet storm patterns in California, but more slowly or more quickly than...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Climate, geomorphology, levee break
The water resources of the western United States depend heavily on snowpack to store part of the wintertime precipitation into the drier summer months. A well-documented shift toward earlier runoff in recent decades has been attributed to 1) more precipitation falling as rain instead of snow and 2) earlier snowmelt. The present study addresses the former, documenting a regional trend toward smaller ratios of winter-total snowfall water equivalent (SFE) to winter-total precipitation (P) during the period 1949–2004. The trends toward reduced SFE are a response to warming across the region, with the most significant reductions occurring where winter wet-day minimum temperatures, averaged over the study period, were...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Recently the Southwest has experienced a spate of dryness, which presents a challenge to the sustainability of current water use by human and natural systems in the region. In the Colorado River Basin, the early 21st century drought has been the most extreme in over a century of Colorado River flows, and might occur in any given century with probability of only 60%. However, hydrological model runs from downscaled Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment climate change simulations suggest that the region is likely to become drier and experience more severe droughts than this. In the latter half of the 21st century the models produced considerably greater drought activity, particularly in the Colorado...
The growth of carbonate formations in caves (speleothems) is sensitive to changes in environmental conditions at the surface (temperature, precipitation and vegetation) and can provide useful paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental information. We use 73 230Th dates from speleothems collected from a cave in southwestern Oregon (USA) to constrain speleothem growth for the past 380 000 years. Most speleothem growth occurred during interglacial periods, whereas little growth occurred during glacial intervals. To evaluate potential environmental controls on speleothem growth we use two new modeling approaches: i) a one-dimensional thermal advection–diffusion model to estimate cave temperatures during the last glacial cycle,...
Much has been learned in the interpretation and use of climate information since the 1997/1998 El Niño event that garnered so much attention. Seasonal-to-interannual forecasts are now produced around the world. However, mismatches in their scales, specificity or communication (of forecast content and uncertainties) with decision-maker needs still hinder their use. More work is needed to improve a) the utility of models, b) access to observational and model/forecast data, c) understanding and communication of the opportunities and limitations of forecasts, and d) methods by which decision systems use climate predictions – both through modifications of decision systems and more tailored forecast information. This...
Potential climate change effects on aspects of conjunctive management of water resources can be evaluated by linking climate models with fully integrated groundwater–surface water models. The objective of this study is to develop a modeling system that links global climate models with regional hydrologic models, using the California Central Valley as a case study. The new method is a supply and demand modeling framework that can be used to simulate and analyze potential climate change and conjunctive use. Supply-constrained and demand-driven linkages in the water system in the Central Valley are represented with the linked climate models, precipitation-runoff models, agricultural and native vegetation water use,...
The pre-cold-frontal low-level jet within oceanic extratropical cyclones represents the lower-tropospheric component of a deeper corridor of concentrated water vapor transport in the cyclone warm sector. These corridors are referred to as atmospheric rivers (ARs) because they are narrow relative to their length scale and are responsible for most of the poleward water vapor transport at midlatitudes. This paper investigates landfalling ARs along adjacent north- and south-coast regions of western North America. Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) satellite observations of long, narrow plumes of enhanced integrated water vapor (IWV) were used to detect ARs just offshore over the eastern Pacific from 1997 to 2005....
Salinity and temperature were measured in near-surface waters at Dumbarton Bridge in South San Francisco Bay during the 1999?2002 water years (1999WY?2002WY). The complete data set from this site, which included 1990WY?1993WY and 1995WY?1998WY, provided a time?series of observations covering a wide range of hydrologic conditions. These conditions included critically dry years and years with above-normal and near?record precipitation and discharges from the major rivers and local streams. Data collection at 15?minute intervals allowed resolution of variability associated with daily tides and other short-term phenomena. Both local stream discharges to South San Francisco Bay and Sacramento?San Joaquin River discharges...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Snyder, M., L. Kueppers, L. Sloan, D.Cayan, et al., 2006, Regional Climate effects of the irrigation and urbanization in the western United States: A model Intercomparison. PIER Project Report, CEC-500-2006-031, 35 p. (on-line report in pdf format, 1.7 MB)
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Risk‐based planning offers a robust way to identify strategies that permit adaptive water resources management under climate change. This paper presents a flexible methodology for conducting climate change risk assessments involving reservoir operations. Decision makers can apply this methodology to their systems by selecting future periods and risk metrics relevant to their planning questions and by collectively evaluating system impacts relative to an ensemble of climate projection scenarios (weighted or not). This paper shows multiple applications of this methodology in a case study involving California's Central Valley Project and State Water Project systems. Multiple applications were conducted to show how...
Ensembles of historical climate simulations and climate projections from the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP’s) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) multi-model dataset were investigated to determine how model credibility affects apparent relative scenario likelihoods in regional risk assessments. Methods were developed and applied in a Northern California case study. An ensemble of 59 twentieth century climate simulations from 17 WCRP CMIP3 models was analyzed to evaluate relative model credibility associated with a 75-member projection ensemble from the same 17 models. Credibility was assessed based on how models realistically reproduced selected statistics of historical climate relevant...