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A new method for automatic detection of atmospheric rivers (ARs) is developed and applied to an atmospheric reanalysis, yielding an extensive catalog of ARs land-falling along the west coast of North America during 1948–2017. This catalog provides a large array of variables that can be used to examine AR cases and their climate-scale variability in exceptional detail. The new record of AR activity, as presented, validated and examined here, provides a perspective on the seasonal cycle and the interannual-interdecadal variability of AR activity affecting the hydroclimate of western North America. Importantly, AR intensity does not exactly follow the climatological pattern of AR frequency. Strong links to hydroclimate...
Our objective was to quantitatively characterize the landscape of climate-relevant resource decisions in the southwestern United States. We worked with stakeholders to determine actual uses of climate-relevant information used in natural resource decisions. We used content analysis of federal register records of decisions and stakeholder consultative groups to develop a survey of decision makers querying the use of climate information in decisions. We sought to create a classification of decisions attributes, information needs, and decision processes that rely on climate science. We sought to engage stakeholder consultative groups to define mechanisms for best filtering, delivering and interpreting what has become...
Abstract (from AGU 100): This study investigates snowmelt and streamflow responses to cloudiness variability across the mountainous parts of the western United States. Twenty years (1996–2015) of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite‐derived cloud cover indices (CC) with 4‐km spatial and daily temporal resolutions are used as a proxy for cloudiness. The primary driver of nonseasonal fluctuations in daily mean solar insolation is the fluctuating cloudiness. We find that CC fluctuations are related to snowmelt and snow‐fed streamflow fluctuations, to some extent (correlations of <0.5). Multivariate linear regression models of daily snowmelt (MELT) and streamflow (ΔQ) variations are constructed for each...
Natural climate variability can strongly temporarily enhance or obscure long-term trends in regional weather due to global climate change. We planned to explore (from our original proposal): (1) The influence of low frequency climate variability (interannual and decadal) on the seasonal probability distributions of daily weather (temperature and precipitation) within the Southwest, with a view on how natural variability modulates regional trends due to global warming. We explored natural climate variability and its impacts on extreme temperatures in Guirguis et al. (2015). We also explored natural climate variability and its impacts on precipitation extremes in Cavanaugh et al. (2015), Cavanugh and Gershunov (2015)...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
This project links climate, hydrological, and ecological changes over the next 30 years in a Great Basin watershed. In recent years, climate variability on annual and decadal time scales has been recognized as greater than commonly perceived with increasing impacts on ecosystems and available water resources. Changes in vegetation distribution, composition and productivity resulting from climate change affect plant water use, which in turn can alter stream flow, groundwater and eventually available water resources. To better understand these links, project researchers implemented two computer-based numeric models in the Cleve Creek watershed in the Schell Creek Range, east of Ely, Nevada. The application of the...
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JHM-D-16-0194.1): This study investigates the spatial and temporal variability of cloudiness across mountain zones in the western United States. Daily average cloud albedo is derived from a 19-yr series (1996–2014) of half-hourly Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) images. During springtime when incident radiation is active in driving snowmelt–runoff processes, the magnitude of daily cloud variations can exceed 50% of long-term averages. Even when aggregated over 3-month periods, cloud albedo varies by ±10% of long-term averages in many locations. Rotated empirical orthogonal functions (REOFs) of daily cloud albedo anomalies over high-elevation...
This survey was used in a study on the use of scientific information in public natural resource management planning and decision-making. This survey was intended to help staff at the Southwest Climate Science Center (SWCSC), and others in the research community, gain a more specific understanding of the kinds of decisions made by public natural resource officials and to identify how scientific information, and in particular climate information, is obtained and applied in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) natural resource decision-making processes. Aside from questions and associated information, the survey document contains page logic describing actions taken in a web-based environment.
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WCAS-D-16-0008.1): Resource managers and decision-makers are increasingly tasked with integrating climate change science into their decisions about resource management and policy development. This often requires climate scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers to work collaboratively throughout the research processes, an approach to knowledge development that is often called “coproduction of knowledge.” The goal of this paper is to synthesize the social science theory of coproduction of knowledge, the metrics currently used to evaluate usable or actionable science in several federal agencies, and insights from experienced climate researchers and...
(Abstract from Springer): There is increasing interest among scholars in producing information that is useful and usable to land and natural resource managers in a changing climate. This interest has prompted transitions from scientist- to stakeholder-driven or collaborative approaches to climate science. A common indicator of successful collaboration is whether stakeholders use the information resulting from the projects in which they are engaged. However, detailed examples of how stakeholders use climate information are relatively scarce in the literature, leading to a challenge in understanding what researchers can and should expect and plan for in terms of stakeholder use of research findings. Drawing on theoretical,...
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00289.1): There is an increasing demand for climate science that decision-makers can readily use to address issues created by climate variability and climate change. To be usable, the science must be relevant to their context and the complex management challenges they face and credible and legitimate in their eyes. The literature on usable science provides guiding principles for its development, which indicate that climate scientists who want to participate in the process need skills in addition to their traditional disciplinary training to facilitate communicating, interacting, and developing and sustaining relationships with stakeholders outside...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eco.1723/full): Quantifying the regulation of precipitation-associated vegetation dynamics on land surface water balance poses a particular challenge in current eco-hydrological studies because terrestrial ecological processes interact with hydrological processes, and both are subject to precipitation change. The objective of this study is to examine how precipitation change-associated vegetation dynamics may regulate catchment water balance in a semiarid to arid mountain ecosystem. To achieve this objective, R-RHESSys, which is short for rasterised regional hydro-ecological simulation system, a distributed hydro-ecological model, was applied to the Cleve...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12322/full): Under rapid landscape change, there is a significant need to expand and connect protected areas (PAs) to prevent further loss of biodiversity and preserve ecological functions across broad geographies. We used a model of landscape resistance and electronic circuit theory to estimate patterns of ecological flow among existing PAs in the western United States. We applied these results to areas previously identified as having high conservation value to distinguish those best positioned to maintain and enhance ecological connectivity and integrity. We found that current flow centrality was highest and effective resistance lowest in areas that...
Originally, we had two primary objectives for this project: (1) To study North Pacific Jet (NPJ) climatology on interannual to decadal time scales by (a) extending the instrumental NPJ period back in time based on Twentieth Century Re-analysis data and (b) by developing a tree-ring based reconstruction of the winter NPJ position. (2). To analyze the influence of NPJ position on Sierra Nevada (SN) fire regimes. For this purpose, we planned to use historical SN fire regime data to establish a pre-settlement NPJ-fire relationship and recent annual area burned data to determine whether this relationship persists into the 21st century. We have reached objective 1a in a study of twentieth century NPJ climatology (Belmecheri...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation