Drought and Pluvial Dipole Events within the Great Plains of the United States

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to quantify dipole events (a drought year followed by a pluvial year) for various spatial scales including the nine Oklahoma climate divisions and the author-defined regions of the U.S. Southern Great Plains (SGP), High Plains (HP), and Northern Great Plains (NGP). Analyses revealed that, on average, over twice as many standard deviation (STDEV) dipoles existed in the latter half of the dataset relative to the first half , suggesting that dramatic increases in precipitation from one year to the next within the Oklahoma climate divisions are increasing with time. For the larger regions within the Great Plains of the United States, the percent chance of a significant pluvial year following a significant drought year was approximately 25% of the time for the SGP and NGP and approximately 16% of the time for the HP. The STDEV dipole analyses further revealed that the frequency of dipoles was consistent between the first and second half of the dataset for the NGP and HP but was increasing with time in the SGP. The temporal periods of anomalous precipitation during relative pluvial years within the STDEV dipole events were unique for each region whereby October occurred most frequently (70%) within the SGP, September occurred most frequently (60%) within the HP, and May occurred most frequently (62%) within the NGP.

Interactive effects of severe drought and grazing on the life history cycle of a bioindicator species

“…System responses to climate change are complex and likely nonlinear; therefore, using suitable species as bioindicators will be important for predicting the influences of global change and assessing the role of land management in conservation. For lesser prairiechickens, adaptive habitat conservation and management are vital for population persistence beyond 2050 given projections of increased drought frequency and intensity (Christian et al, 2015;Cook et al, 2015;Grisham, Zavaleta, et al, 2016), which, based on results, may further disrupt the boom-bust life history strategy by either reducing the population to levels that cannot rebound quickly or not allowing enough time following an extreme drought to rebound to levels that F I G U R E 6 The number of cow days/ha positively influenced lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus; n = 49 leks) recruitment predrought in Milnesand Prairie Preserve, New Mexico, from 2004 to 2015. Gray lines represent 95% confidence intervals will be resilient to another drought in a quicker return interval.…”

“…Cumulative rainfall during the first 10 months of 2011 was nearly six times lower than the 30-year average of 43.94 cm at the West Texas Mesonet Site (Lubbock, TX, USA). Substantial increases in year-to-year variability in rainfall patterns and more severe storms also are expected (Christian, Christian, & Basara, 2015;Cook et al, 2015).…”

Long‐term analysis of the asynchronicity between temperature and precipitation maxima in the United States Great Plains

“…Only stations contained within the GP of the United States (Figure 1) were retained for this study which spanned from 1895 to 2015. Furthermore, similar to Christian et al (2015), the GP was defined to include the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota. A length of period (>90 years) requirement was used to filter out stations with short periods of record.…”

“…Recent climate change research has focused on the effects of global climate change on regional precipitation (e.g. Ruiz-Barradas and Nigam, 2010;Bukovsky and Karoly, 2011;Groisman et al, 2012;Long et al, 2012;Christian et al, 2015;Shi and Durran, 2016), temperature (e.g. Kunkel et al, 2010;Long et al, 2012;Kumar et al, 2013;Berg et al, 2015) and plant health and phenology (e.g.…”

Sensitivity analysis of vegetation indices to drought over two tallgrass prairie sites

“…Drought is a recurring event of Oklahoma's climate cycle (Basara et al, 2013;Christian et al, 2015) and poses significant impacts on various sectors of the economy (OWRB, 2010). Seasonal drought can occur at any time of the year and the summer drought that coincides with the growing season can cause ecological imbalances and influences surface biophysical parameters such as vegetation indices, land surface temperature, soil moisture and evapotranspiration (Ghulam et al, 2007;Reichstein et al, 2002).…”