2008
DOI: 10.1029/2007jd009347
|View full text |Cite
|
Sign up to set email alerts
|

Atlantic and Pacific SST influences on Medieval drought in North America simulated by the Community Atmospheric Model

Abstract: Severe drought is arguably one of the greatest recurring natural disasters that strikes North America. A synthesis of multiproxy data shows that North America was in the grip of a severe centennial‐scale drought during medieval times (800–1300 AD). In this study, the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM) is used to investigate the role of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies from the North Atlantic and the tropical Pacific Ocean on this megadrought. These anomalies are obtained from proxy reconstructions of SST… Show more

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...
3

Citation Types

12
122
1

Year Published

2009
2009
2016
2016

Publication Types

Select...
7

Relationship

0
7

Authors

Journals

citations
Cited by 87 publications
(135 citation statements)
references
References 93 publications
12
122
1
Order By: Relevance
“…More unequivocal evidence exists for a warm North Atlantic (36). Recent modeling efforts, assuming cool Pacific and warm Atlantic SSTS, have replicated the main features of medieval drought in North America documented in paleoclimatic data (36). It is worth noting that droughts of the 1950s and of recent years were both accompanied by cool Pacific and warm Atlantic SSTs (37).…”
mentioning
confidence: 94%
See 1 more Smart Citation
“…More unequivocal evidence exists for a warm North Atlantic (36). Recent modeling efforts, assuming cool Pacific and warm Atlantic SSTS, have replicated the main features of medieval drought in North America documented in paleoclimatic data (36). It is worth noting that droughts of the 1950s and of recent years were both accompanied by cool Pacific and warm Atlantic SSTs (37).…”
mentioning
confidence: 94%
“…Associations between SSTs and Southwestern drought during this period have been explored with paleoclimatic data and modeling (4,(33)(34)(35) and although the paleoclimatic data that document Pacific Ocean conditions during the medieval period are not in total agreement, most show temperatures in the eastern Pacific indicative of cool El Niño/Southern Oscillation, or La Niña-type conditions (22). More unequivocal evidence exists for a warm North Atlantic (36). Recent modeling efforts, assuming cool Pacific and warm Atlantic SSTS, have replicated the main features of medieval drought in North America documented in paleoclimatic data (36).…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…While several papers have speculated that these landscape changes may have amplified these droughts (Feng et al 2008;Seager et al 2008b), only one study to date has explicitly tested surface impacts on the megadroughts within a modeling framework (Cook et al 2011). They found that vegetation mortality alone (i.e., without wind erosion or dust feedbacks) was insufficient to amplify the modelsimulated droughts or reproduce the drought persistence seen in the paleorecord.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…More recently, Graham et al (2011) have suggested that an anomalously warm Indian Ocean and enhanced zonal SST gradient across the Indo-Pacific region may have also contributed to the megadroughts and other climate anomalies during the MCA. General circulation models (GCM), forced by either idealized (Feng et al 2008) or reconstructed (Burgman et al 2010;Seager et al 2008a) SST fields, can stimulate some drying over North America but still have difficulty reproducing the magnitude and persistence of the MCA megadroughts.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
See 1 more Smart Citation