Geographic patterns and dynamics of Alaskan climate interpolated from a sparse station record

Fleming, Michael D.; Crämer, Wolfgang; Hufford, Gary L.; Serreze, Mark C.

doi:10.1046/j.1365-2486.2000.06008.x

Cited by 55 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Maximum precipitation in the Mackenzie basin (Bjornsson et al, 1995) and central Alaska (Fleming et al, 2000) occurs in the summer. However, winter precipitation contributes to water storage and spring runoff, which is the peak time of year for river runoff (Lammers et al, 2001), and is therefore an important component of the hydrological cycle of the basins (Lackmann et al, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synoptic forcing of precipitation in the Mackenzie and Yukon River basins

Cassano

2009

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT:The relationship between near-surface atmospheric circulation, as characterized by sea level pressure patterns, and precipitation in the Mackenzie and Yukon River basins is presented. A synoptic climatology of sea level pressure patterns based on daily sea level pressure anomalies from the ERA40 reanalysis dataset was created using the method of self-organizing maps. This objective analysis identified all major near-surface atmospheric circulation patterns in the region and illustrated the change in dominant circulation patterns throughout the seasons, with strong Aleutian low patterns dominant in the winter and patterns characterized by low pressure over land areas and the Beaufort/Chukchi Seas in the summer. These synoptic patterns were then related to daily precipitation in the Mackenzie and Yukon River basins. The largest daily precipitation values, for both the Mackenzie and Yukon basins, were associated with patterns that occur most frequently in the summer, likely associated with increased frequency of cyclones and convective events that occur over land in that season. During winter, the largest positive precipitation anomalies were along the coastal mountain range in southeastern Alaska associated with Aleutian lows bringing warm, moist flow from the south resulting in upslope flow on the windward side of these mountains. These patterns were responsible for many of the large precipitation events in the winter in the Mackenzie basin. The largest precipitation events in the winter in the Yukon basin occurred with patterns that have a low pressure centre to the southwest of the basin. This synoptic pattern results in southerly flow advecting moisture into the basin to the west of the higher topography which bounds much of the southern boundary of the Yukon watershed.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synoptic forcing of precipitation in the Mackenzie and Yukon River basins

Cassano

2009

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Including elevation information from a digital elevation model (DEM) in the regionalization procedure (e.g. Phillips et al, 1992;Hudson and Wackernagel, 1994;Hutchinson, 1995b;Fleming et al, 2000;Goovaerts, 2000;New et al, 2002) will only lead to improved results if elevation is actually describing the spatial variation of the climatic element within the study area.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

REGEOTOP: New climatic data fields for East Asia based on localized relief information and geostatistical methods

Thomas¹,

Herzfeld²

2004

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate data fields represent essential tools for climate, biogeographical and agricultural research to run models and to provide observational data for the verification of global climate models (GCM). Climate data fields are generated through interpolation of observations taken at meteorological stations. Most current interpolation procedures try to describe the influence of topography on spatial climatic variations by relating them directly to absolute elevation or by introducing simple relief variables such as exposure. In both cases this may not properly describe spatial climatic variations, particularly not those of precipitation.This paper describes a regionalization procedure (REGEOTOP) that was applied to generate monthly spatial climatic data fields of temperature, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration for East Asia at 0.25°resolution from a new climate data base. REGEOTOP proceeds in several steps, combining statistical and geostatistical methods. First, basic relief types are determined by application of principal component analysis to moving windows in a digital elevation model (DEM) of the study area. Second, climatic variables are related to relief parameters by regression analysis with respect to basic relief types, location, and elevation. To account for large-scale variation of climate variables, geostatistical variogram analysis (step three) and interpolation (step four) are applied to the regression residuals. Finally, maps of regression estimates plus kriged residuals are calculated, for a total of 1440 cases.The relief parameterization retains about 90% of the variance of a DEM in 10-18 principal components, depending on input parameters. The REGEOTOP method is computationally expensive, but results justify the effort. Owing to the thorough analysis in the REGEOTOP method and its application to the most comprehensive climate databases that exist outside China to date, the resultant maps provide a solid basis for GCM verification or hydrological and agro-ecologic investigations and prognoses for East Asia.

show abstract

“…ANUSPLIN calculates and optimizes thin plate smoothing splines that are fitted to datasets distributed across an unlimited number of climate station locations, which use elevation as a third variable in the spline interpolation. It allows for regional climate variations that are associated with latitude and continentality to be taken into account simultaneously with elevation and rain shadow effects, provided that these effects are captured sufficiently by the station network [34]. ANUSPLIN has been widely applied in precipitation interpolation in China.…”

Section: Gridded Precipitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal and Spatial Variability of Droughts in Southwest China from 1961 to 2012

Huang

Yang

et al. 2015

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Southwest China (SC) has suffered a series of super extreme droughts in the last decade. This study analyzed the temporal and spatial variations of drought in SC from 1961 to 2012. Based on precipitation anomaly index (PAI) that was derived from 1 km gridded precipitation data, three time scales (month, year and decade) for the drought frequency (DF) and drought area were applied to estimate the spatio-temporal structure of droughts. A time-series analysis showed that winter droughts and spring droughts occurred frequently for almost half of the year from November to March. Summer droughts occasionally occurred in severe drought decades: the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. During the period of observation, the percent of drought area in SC increased from the 1960s (<5%) to the 2000s (>25%). A total of 57% of the area was affected by drought in 2011, when the area experienced its most severe drought both in terms of area and severity. The spatial analysis, which benefitted from the gridded data, detailed that all of SC is at drought risk except for the central Sichuan Basin. The area at high risk for severe and extreme droughts was localized in the mountains of the junction of Sichuan and Yunnan. The temporal and OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 13598 spatial variability can be prerequisites for drought resistance planning and drought risk management of SC.

show abstract

Geographic patterns and dynamics of Alaskan climate interpolated from a sparse station record

Cited by 55 publications

References 26 publications

Synoptic forcing of precipitation in the Mackenzie and Yukon River basins

Synoptic forcing of precipitation in the Mackenzie and Yukon River basins

REGEOTOP: New climatic data fields for East Asia based on localized relief information and geostatistical methods

Temporal and Spatial Variability of Droughts in Southwest China from 1961 to 2012

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About