On the Cause of the 1930s Dust Bowl

Schubert, Siegfried D.; Suárez, Max J.; Pegion, Philip; Koster, Randal D.; Bacmeister, Julio T.

doi:10.1126/science.1095048

Cited by 517 publications

(392 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

374

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The implication is that, as demonstrated for the western North American sector (Schubert et al, 2004b;Herweijer et al, 2005;Seager et al, 2005a), the major extra-tropical droughts of this period are primarily forced by tropical Pacific SSTs. In particular, sustained La Niña-like conditions correspond to persistent drought in southern South America (Uruguay, southern Brazil and north and central Argentina), and much of Europe, as observed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The SST data (Kaplan et al, 1998;Rayner et al, 2003) is that used to force the model experiments outlined in Section 2.2 (for details see Herweijer et al, 2005;Seager et al, 2005a (Schubert et al, 2004b;Sutton and Hodson, 2005). While that is possible, it is noteworthy that during the three nineteenth century droughts, the north Atlantic was not notably warmer than the Pacific.…”

Section: Sstsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The global footprint of persistent extra‐tropical drought in the instrumental era

Herweijer

Seager

2008

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The major North American droughts as per instrumental records are shown to be part of a larger, global pattern of low‐frequency drought variability. Drought in western North America during the 1850s–1860s, 1870s, 1890s, 1930s and 1950s, is shown to coincide with the occurrence of prolonged dry spells in parts of Europe, southern South America and western Australia. Tropical land regions are mostly wet during these periods, with the exception of central east Africa, southern India and Sri Lanka, which are dry. The recent 1998–2003 period of drought in western North America reveals a similar global hydroclimatic ‘footprint’ with the exception of a wet southern South America and continued dry conditions in the Sahel. Common to each of the six droughts is the persistence of anomalously cool east central tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs). For the 1998–2003 case, the warming of SSTs everywhere outside of the east central tropical Pacific may be influencing precipitation and masking the influence of persistent precipitation anomalies driven from the tropical Pacific alone. In general, examination of these major historical extra‐tropical droughts reveals a hemispherically and, in the extra‐tropics, a zonally symmetric pattern consistent with forcing from the Tropics.Ensembles of model simulations forced by observed SSTs globally (Global Ocean Global Atmosphere, GOGA) and only within the tropical Pacific (Pacific Ocean Global Atmosphere‐Mixed Layer, POGA‐ML) are both able to capture the global pattern of the persistent extra‐tropical drought regimes since the mid‐nineteenth century. This implies that the recently demonstrated link between SST forcing and drought in North America is in fact only one part of a global hydroclimatic response to the persistence of cool SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific. Indian Ocean SST forcing is required to capture the droughts in central east Africa. Over Europe, the modelled, low‐frequency precipitation signal is unrealistically ENSO dominated, as the model does not faithfully reproduce the observed history of low‐frequency NAO variability. Overall, our results suggest that the global pattern of persistent drought appears to be a low‐frequency version of interannual ENSO‐forced variability. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sstsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The global footprint of persistent extra‐tropical drought in the instrumental era

Herweijer

Seager

2008

Intl Journal of Climatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Specifically, soil moisture responds to local enhancements in SWdn that further amplifies SWdn, especially in late summer. Previous studies have diagnosed the strong influence of tropical Pacific SSTs on drought occurrence in the US (e.g., Schubert et al, 2004;Seager and Hoerling, 2014). However, drought models that rely on Pacific SSTs predict a prolonged drought during the 1970s, a period in reality characterized by increased precipitation, especially in the central and eastern United States (e.g., Seager and Hoerling, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerosol trends as a potential driver of regional climate in the central United States: evidence from observations

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. In situ surface observations show that downward surface solar radiation (SWdn) over the central and southeastern United States (US) has increased by 0.58-1.0 Wm −2 a −1 over the 2000-2014 time frame, simultaneously with reductions in US aerosol optical depth (AOD) of 3.3-5.0 × 10 −3 a −1 . Establishing a link between these two trends, however, is challenging due to complex interactions between aerosols, clouds, and radiation. Here we investigate the clear-sky aerosol-radiation effects of decreasing US aerosols on SWdn and other surface variables by applying a one-dimensional radiative transfer to 2000-2014 measurements of AOD at two Surface Radiation Budget Network (SURFRAD) sites in the central and southeastern United States. Observations characterized as "clear-sky" may in fact include the effects of thin cirrus clouds, and we consider these effects by imposing satellite data from the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) into the radiative transfer model. The model predicts that 2000-2014 trends in aerosols may have driven clear-sky SWdn trends of +1.35 Wm −2 a −1 at Goodwin Creek, MS, and +0.93 Wm −2 a −1 at Bondville, IL. While these results are consistent in sign with observed trends, a cross-validated multivariate regression analysis shows that AOD reproduces 20-26 % of the seasonal (June-September, JJAS) variability in clear-sky direct and diffuse SWdn at Bondville, IL, but none of the JJAS variability at Goodwin Creek, MS. Using in situ soil and surface flux measurements from the Ameriflux network and Illinois Climate Network (ICN) together with assimilated meteorology from the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS), we find that sunnier summers tend to coincide with increased surface air temperature and soil moisture deficits in the central US. The 1990-2015 trends in the NLDAS SWdn over the central US are also of a similar magnitude to our modeled 2000-2014 clear-sky trends. Taken together, these results suggest that climate and regional hydrology in the central US are sensitive to the recent reductions in aerosol concentrations. Our work has implications for severely polluted regions outside the US, where improvements in air quality due to reductions in the aerosol burden could inadvertently pose an enhanced climate risk.

show abstract

“…Positive trends in precipitation associated with warmer temperatures, on the other hand, will tend to increase ecosystem productivity and can result in terrestrial carbon uptake [Nemani et al, 2002]. Finally, a variety of recent evidence suggests that land-atmosphere coupling [Deser and Timlin, 1997;Pielke et al, 1998] provides an important positive feedback within the climate system, which can lead to catastrophic droughts such as the one experienced in the Great Plains of North America in the 1930's [Schubert et al, 2004]. Indeed, such feedback mechanisms may explain much of the variance in precipitation and NDVI that is not accounted for by SST anomalies in this work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response of terrestrial ecosystems to recent Northern Hemispheric drought

Lotsch

Friedl

Anderson

et al. 2005

Geophysical Research Letters

115

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Satellite normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) observations reveal large and geographically extensive decreases in vegetation activity in Eurasia and North America between 1999 and 2002. In 2001, 73% of central southwest Asia exhibited NDVI anomalies that were more than one standard deviation below 21‐year average conditions, and in 2002, fully 95% of North America exhibited below‐average NDVI. This episode of large‐scale vegetation browning coincided with a prolonged period of below‐normal precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere, which limited moisture availability for plant growth. Spatio‐temporal dynamics of NDVI, precipitation, and sea surface temperature data reveal that synchronous patterns of ocean circulation anomalies in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indo‐Pacific are strongly correlated with observed joint variability in NDVI and precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere during this period.

show abstract

On the Cause of the 1930s Dust Bowl

Cited by 517 publications

References 15 publications

The global footprint of persistent extra‐tropical drought in the instrumental era

The global footprint of persistent extra‐tropical drought in the instrumental era

Aerosol trends as a potential driver of regional climate in the central United States: evidence from observations

Response of terrestrial ecosystems to recent Northern Hemispheric drought

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About