A winter precipitation ‘dipole’ in the western United States associated with multidecadal ENSO variability

Brown, David P.; Comrie, Andrew C.

doi:10.1029/2003gl018726

Cited by 129 publications

(153 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

144

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…the Pacific North-west is often wet (dry) with low (high) fire activity when the South-west is dry (wet) with high (low) fire activity (Morgan et al 2001). This 'see-saw' of climatic pattern has been previously studied using rainfall and various circulation indices (Dettinger et al 1998;Brown and Comrie 2004), and now fire-scar and tree-ring networks of the western USA clearly demonstrate the importance of this phenomenon to fire regimes over multi-century periods in replicated studies (e.g. Westerling and Swetnam 2003;Schoennagel et al 2005;Kitzberger et al 2007;Heyerdahl et al 2008).…”

Section: Paleofire Climatology From Tree Rings and Fire Scarsmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…Westerling and Swetnam 2003;Schoennagel et al 2005;Kitzberger et al 2007;Heyerdahl et al 2008). The dipole has been related to the differential effect of the ENSO on the position and strength of jet streams (Dettinger et al 1998;Brown and Comrie 2004). Brown et al (2008) and Taylor et al (2008) provide further evidence and discussion of the dipole.…”

Section: Paleofire Climatology From Tree Rings and Fire Scarsmentioning

confidence: 85%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Fire Climatology in the western United States: introduction to special issue

Swetnam¹,

Anderson²

2008

Int. J. Wildland Fire

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Advances in fire climatology have derived from recent studies of modern and paleoecological records. We convened a series of workshops and a conference session to report and review regional-scale findings, and these meetings led to the 10 papers in this special issue. Two papers focus on fire and climate patterns in the modern era using documentary records, four papers utilise tree rings to evaluate recent centuries of change, and four papers evaluate charcoal and pollen in lake, bog, and alluvial sediments over the Holocene. Here we summarise some of the key findings from these papers in the context of other recent fire climatology literature. These studies illustrate the value of long-term perspectives and spatial networks of fire and climate data in discovering the patterns and modes of past fire regime and climate variations.Warming temperatures and increasing drought occurrence in many regions of the world are resulting in widespread ecosystem impacts (ACIA 2005; IPCC 2007). One of the most dramatic ecological responses to climate change is wildfire. The importance of climate in driving past, present, and future fire regimes has greatly increased the need for better understanding of fire climatology. As distinct from fire meteorology, which addresses relatively fine-scale spatial processes over short time periods (i.e. days to weeks), fire climatology addresses broad-scale spatial and temporal processes (i.e. seasons to millennia).Advances in fire climatology

show abstract

Section: Paleofire Climatology From Tree Rings and Fire Scarsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Paleofire Climatology From Tree Rings and Fire Scarsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Fire Climatology in the western United States: introduction to special issue

Swetnam¹,

Anderson²

2008

Int. J. Wildland Fire

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…McCabe and Dettinger (1999) showed that the strength of western US precipitation-SOI relations closely resembles decadal variations in the PDO index. More recently, Brown and Comrie (2004) have shown inconsistencies in the canonical ENSO response in western US precipitation commensurate with the PDO phase shift. The PDO regime has also been shown to modulate winter temperature responses over most of western Canada during El Nino and La Nina events (Bonsal et al, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low-frequency variability in Southwestern Canadian stream flow: links with large-scale climate anomalies

Gobena

Gan

2006

Int. J. Climatol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

By applying a suit of statistical techniques, this study investigated the impacts of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific-North America (PNA) pattern, the West Pacific (WP) pattern and the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) teleconnections on the interannual to interdecadal variability of southwestern (SW) Canadian streamflow anomalies. It is shown that El Nino (La Nina) episodes lead to significant negative (positive) streamflow anomalies in several subregions during the spring and/or summer months following the ENSO onset year. A simple composite analysis of streamflow for anomalous PNA years conditioned on non-ENSO years showed that the high phase of PNA could also produce an El Nino-like streamflow response over the region. In addition, the ENSO-streamflow relationship appears to be modulated by the interdecadal oscillation of the North Pacific (NP) climate as indexed by the PDO. The interaction between PDO and ENSO was found to be constructive when the two are in phase and destructive otherwise. The potential of using the three large-scale climate anomalies (ENSO, PNA and PDO) for long-range streamflow forecasting in SW Canada was assessed using a partial correlation analysis with the southern oscillation index (SOI), the PNA and PDO indices at lead times of up to 10 months. While partial correlations with all three indices were found to be statistically significant for several basins, the ENSO and PDO effects appear to be far more important than that of the PNA pattern. The winter season SOI, which is an indicator of the mature phase of ENSO, shows modest correlations with basins whose flow regimes are dominated by winter rain/spring snowmelt. On the other hand, the winter season PDO shows relatively strong correlations with basins originating in the Rocky Mountains, whose flow regimes are dominated by spring-summer snow/glacier melt. The modest SOI-streamflow relationships are partly attributed to nonlinearity induced by the interference from the extratropical sources of variability (i.e. PNA and PDO). Long-range streamflow forecasting strategies for this region should thus incorporate information from the three large-scale climate anomalies.

show abstract

“…El Niño (La Niña) events tend to bring above (below) normal precipitation to the Southwest during the winter months of December-January-FebruaryMarch (DJFM). Recent research has also shown that the stability of this teleconnection is dependent on the phase of the PDO (Gershunov and Barnett, 1998;Gutzler et al, 2002;Brown and Comrie, 2004). The negative (positive) phase of the PDO tends to bring more La Niña (El Niño) events and an extended number of years with below (above) normal winter precipitation (Gray et al, 2003).…”

Section: Connections To Southwestern Wildfire Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Interannual to decadal changes in extreme fire weather event frequencies across the southwestern United States

Crimmins

2011

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Low-frequency changes (decades to years) in precipitation related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) are known to influence wildfire variability across the southwest United States. Little work has been done to identify whether daily fire weather variability, also important to wildfire activity, is influenced by these same climatic phenomena. This study identifies the synoptic climatological conditions associated with extreme fire weather events in the Southwest and constructs an extreme fire weather frequency data set for the period of 1958-2003 using a logistic regression technique. Interannual changes in extreme fire weather day frequencies are not linearly correlated with either ENSO or PDO, but do show significant deviations from expected values when grouped by PDO phase (positive or negative) and further subgrouped by ENSO state (La Niña, El Niño or neutral). A higher number of extreme fire weather days occur during the negative phase of the PDO, especially when accompanied by a La Niña event.

show abstract

A winter precipitation ‘dipole’ in the western United States associated with multidecadal ENSO variability

Cited by 129 publications

References 29 publications

Fire Climatology in the western United States: introduction to special issue

Fire Climatology in the western United States: introduction to special issue

Low-frequency variability in Southwestern Canadian stream flow: links with large-scale climate anomalies

Interannual to decadal changes in extreme fire weather event frequencies across the southwestern United States

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About