Contribution of anthropogenic warming to California drought during 2012–2014

Williams, A. Park; Seager, Richard; Abatzoglou, John T.; Cook, Benjamin I.; Smerdon, Jason E.; Cook, Edward R.

doi:10.1002/2015gl064924

Cited by 478 publications

(383 citation statements)

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“…Our estimates of the contribution of anthropogenic warming to the Pan‐Caribbean did not consider anthropogenic effects on precipitation trends and variability nor how these affected the Pan‐Caribbean drought, as these effects are likely too complex to be approximated by calculating empirical trends (Abatzoglou & Williams, 2016; Deser et al, 2012; Williams et al, 2015). Notably, climate models consistently simulate significant decreases in precipitation in the Caribbean as anthropogenic greenhouse‐gas concentrations increase in the future (IPCC, 2014; Neelin et al, 2006), and if those trends are already underway, then the total contribution of anthropogenic climate change would be greater than that estimated here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A key drawback of the Thornthwaite approach—especially for climate change applications—is the use of temperature as the only climate variable forcing PET, which leads to an exacerbation of the sensitivity of PET to temperature variations (Abatzoglou & Williams, 2016; Smerdon et al, 2015; Williams et al, 2015). The FAO formulation for PET, in contrast, is calculated using temperature, vapor pressure, wind speed, and net radiation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite its simplicity, we used this approach because we aimed to specifically quantify the anthropogenic warming trend, which models are likely to accurately characterize. However, we did not attempt to identify the anthropogenic component of other variables used in the calculation of PET and scPDSI (such as precipitation) because of the difficulty of separating forced and internal variability in these variables (Cook et al, 2014; Deser et al, 2012; Williams et al, 2015). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exacerbation of the 2013–2016 Pan‐Caribbean Drought by Anthropogenic Warming

Herrera

Ault

Fasullo

et al. 2018

Geophysical Research Letters

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The Caribbean islands are expected to see more frequent and severe droughts from reduced precipitation and increased evaporative demand due to anthropogenic climate change. Between 2013 and 2016, the Caribbean experienced a widespread drought due in part to El Niño in 2015–2016, but it is unknown whether its severity was exacerbated by anthropogenic warming. This work examines the role of recent warming on this drought, using a recently developed high‐resolution self‐calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index data set. The resulting analysis suggest that anthropogenic warming accounted for ~15–17% of the drought's severity and ~7% of its spatial extent. These findings strongly suggest that climate model projected anthropogenic drying in the Caribbean is already underway, with major implications for the more than 43 million people currently living in this region.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exacerbation of the 2013–2016 Pan‐Caribbean Drought by Anthropogenic Warming

Herrera

Ault

Fasullo

et al. 2018

Geophysical Research Letters

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“…We quantify the influence of ACC using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 5 (CMIP5) multimodel mean changes in temperature and vapor pressure following Williams et al (26) (Fig. S1; Methods).…”

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confidence: 99%

Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests

Abatzoglou

Williams

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Increased forest fire activity across the western continental United States (US) in recent decades has likely been enabled by a number of factors, including the legacy of fire suppression and human settlement, natural climate variability, and human-caused climate change. We use modeled climate projections to estimate the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to observed increases in eight fuel aridity metrics and forest fire area across the western United States. Anthropogenic increases in temperature and vapor pressure deficit significantly enhanced fuel aridity across western US forests over the past several decades and, during 2000-2015, contributed to 75% more forested area experiencing high (>1 σ) fire-season fuel aridity and an average of nine additional days per year of high fire potential. Anthropogenic climate change accounted for ∼55% of observed increases in fuel aridity from 1979 to 2015 across western US forests, highlighting both anthropogenic climate change and natural climate variability as important contributors to increased wildfire potential in recent decades. We estimate that human-caused climate change contributed to an additional 4.2 million ha of forest fire area during 1984-2015, nearly doubling the forest fire area expected in its absence. Natural climate variability will continue to alternate between modulating and compounding anthropogenic increases in fuel aridity, but anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a driver of increased forest fire activity and should continue to do so while fuels are not limiting.wildfire | climate change | attribution | forests W idespread increases in fire activity, including area burned (1, 2), number of large fires (3), and fire-season length (4, 5), have been documented across the western United States (US) and in other temperate and high-latitude ecosystems over the past half century (6, 7). Increased fire activity across western US forests has coincided with climatic conditions more conducive to wildfire (2-4, 8). The strong interannual correlation between forest fire activity and fire-season fuel aridity, as well as observed increases in vapor pressure deficit (VPD) (9), fire danger indices (10), and climatic water deficit (CWD) (11) over the past several decades, present a compelling argument that climate change has contributed to the recent increases in fire activity. Previous studies have implicated anthropogenic climate change (ACC) as a contributor to observed and projected increases in fire activity globally and in the western United States (12-19), yet no studies have quantified the degree to which ACC has contributed to observed increases in fire activity in western US forests.Changes in fire activity due to climate, and ACC therein, are modulated by the co-occurrence of changes in land management and human activity that influence fuels, ignition, and suppression. The legacy of twentieth century fire suppression across western continental US forests contributed to increased fuel loads and fire potential in many locations (20,21), ...

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“…Drought is common and can be persistent in many parts of the United States where synoptic meteorological patterns, topography, local features, and microsite conditions affect precipitation patterns and soil water (Knapp et al 2015b;Loik et al 2004;Sun et al 2015). Long-term drought has affected the central and southeast United States in recent years (Berdanier and Clark 2015;Knapp et al 2015a), and California in 2015 is experiencing a 1-in-1200 year drought (Griffin and Anchukaitis 2014;Williams et al 2015). Statewide 2013 precipitation averages for California were less than 34 % of historic averages (Swain et al 2014), with trends continuing into 2014 and 2015.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water relations and photosynthesis along an elevation gradient for Artemisia tridentata during an historic drought

Reed

Loik

2016

Oecologia

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shrub species was quite resilient to this 1-in-1200 year drought. However, plant water potential and photosynthesis corresponded to differences in soil moisture across the gradient. Soil re-wetting in early summer increased water potential and photosynthesis at the lowest elevation. Effects on water relations and photosynthesis of this widespread, cold desert shrub species may be disproportionate at lower elevations as drought length increases in a future climate. Keywords Leaf gas exchange · CO 2 assimilation · Photosynthetic limitations · V cmax · J max · Drought stress Abbreviations ARate of photosynthetic CO 2 assimilation (µmolLight-saturated rate of CO 2 assimilation (µmol Abstract Quantifying the variation in plant-water relations and photosynthesis over environmental gradients and during unique events can provide a better understanding of vegetation patterns in a future climate. We evaluated the hypotheses that photosynthesis and plant water potential would correspond to gradients in precipitation and soil moisture during a lengthy drought, and that experimental water additions would increase photosynthesis for the widespread evergreen shrub Artemisia tridentata ssp. vaseyana. We quantified abiotic conditions and physiological characteristics for control and watered plants at 2135, 2315, and 2835 m near Mammoth Lakes, CA, USA, at the ecotone of the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin ecoregions. Snowfall, total precipitation, and soil moisture increased with elevation, but air temperature and soil N content did not. Plant water potential (Ψ), stomatal conductance (g s ), maximum photosynthetic rate (A max ), carboxylation rate (V cmax ), and electron transport rate (J max ) all significantly increased with elevations. Addition of water increased Ψ, g s , J max , and A max only at the lowest elevation; g s contributed about 30 % of the constraints on photosynthesis at the lowest elevation and 23 % at the other two elevations. The physiology of this foundational Communicated by Susanne Schwinning. Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article

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Contribution of anthropogenic warming to California drought during 2012–2014

Cited by 478 publications

References 64 publications

Exacerbation of the 2013–2016 Pan‐Caribbean Drought by Anthropogenic Warming

Exacerbation of the 2013–2016 Pan‐Caribbean Drought by Anthropogenic Warming

Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests

Water relations and photosynthesis along an elevation gradient for Artemisia tridentata during an historic drought

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