Quantifying the role of atmospheric rivers in the interior western United States

Rutz, Jonathan J.; Steenburgh, W. James

doi:10.1002/asl.392

Cited by 101 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Moreover, SIO‐R1 is associated with more accumulated precipitation as well as with more intense precipitation events, yielding ARs that are clearly strongly associated with heavy orographic precipitation over the coastal ranges and to some extent over the inland topography of the mountainous West (Figure S2). What's more, SIO‐R1, accounts best for heavy precipitation over the interior southwestern mountains and deserts (Figure S2), which is associated with ARs land‐falling over Baja California [ Rutz and Steenburgh , ; Rivera et al ., ] that are missing from RNW. Additionally, we do not see any spurious discontinuities in the SIO‐R1 data that may have been due to the introduction of satellite data in the 1970s (supporting information section S2c), justifying the use of SIO‐R1 in studies of land‐falling AR activity from a long‐term climatological perspective.…”

Section: Ar Detection Methodology (Ardt) and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the climate‐scale variability of atmospheric rivers affecting western North America

Gershunov

Shulgina

Ralph

et al. 2017

Geophysical Research Letters

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A new method for automatic detection of atmospheric rivers (ARs) is developed and applied to an atmospheric reanalysis, yielding an extensive catalog of ARs land‐falling along the west coast of North America during 1948–2017. This catalog provides a large array of variables that can be used to examine AR cases and their climate‐scale variability in exceptional detail. The new record of AR activity, as presented, validated and examined here, provides a perspective on the seasonal cycle and the interannual‐interdecadal variability of AR activity affecting the hydroclimate of western North America. Importantly, AR intensity does not exactly follow the climatological pattern of AR frequency. Strong links to hydroclimate are demonstrated using a high‐resolution precipitation data set. We describe the seasonal progression of AR activity and diagnose linkages with climate variability expressed in Pacific sea surface temperatures, revealing links to Pacific decadal variability, recent regional anomalies, as well as a generally rising trend in land‐falling AR activity. The latter trend is consistent with a long‐term increase in vapor transport from the warming North Pacific onto the North American continent. The new catalog provides unprecedented opportunities to study the climate‐scale behavior and predictability of ARs affecting western North America.

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Section: Ar Detection Methodology (Ardt) and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the climate‐scale variability of atmospheric rivers affecting western North America

Gershunov

Shulgina

Ralph

et al. 2017

Geophysical Research Letters

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212

319

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“…ARs are relatively narrow regions in the atmosphere that are responsible for most of the lateral transport of water vapour from the tropics to higher latitudes (Dacre et al, ). They appear to explain many of the heavy precipitation events (HPEs) in different areas of the world (Zhu and Newell, ; Lavers et al, ; Nakamura et al, ; Rutz and Steenburgh, ; Lu et al, ; Gimeno et al, ; Steinschneider and Lall, , ; Najibi et al, ). Recently Krichak et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

An event synchronization method to link heavy rainfall events and large‐scale atmospheric circulation features

Conticello

Cioffi

Merz

et al. 2017

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Heavy rainfall, floods and other hydroclimatic extremes may be related to specific states of organization of the atmospheric circulation. The identification of these states and their linkage to local extremes could facilitate a physically meaningful quantification of local extremes in future climates and could allow forecasting extremes conditioned on the large‐scale atmospheric state. A novel methodology is presented that combines non‐linear, non‐parametric methods to link heavy precipitation events (HPEs) to atmospheric circulation states. Using daily rainfall data for the period 1951–2015 from 37 gauges in the Lazio region in Italy, HPEs are defined. For the same period, two atmospheric variables, namely, the 850 hPa geopotential height field and the integrated vapour transport (IVT), are derived from reanalysis data. The geopotential configurations driving heavy precipitation in the region are identified by combing self‐organized maps and event synchronization. First, a finite number of representative geopotential configurations is identified. Rainfall gauges are pooled into clusters, which show synchronized occurrence of heavy precipitation. Furthermore, geopotential configurations are identified, which tend to drive HPEs. For these geopotential states, the probability of HPE occurrence as a function of IVT is calculated through a local logistic regression model. Finally, it is explored whether the identified patterns are related to the occurrence of atmospheric rivers, which govern the atmospheric humidity transport from the tropics and subtropics to Europe. The relation found demonstrates the reliability of the proposed methodology.

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“…In both regions, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) alters the frequency and intensity of the NAM, tropical storms, and the Pacific frontal systems, and can cause annual variations in precipitation and flooding (House and Hirschboeck, 1997;Hidalgo and Dracup, 2003). Winter storms in both regions are also intensified by the occurrence of atmospheric rivers (Dettinger et al, 2011), which can cause total winter precipitation to increase up to approximately 25 % (Rutz and Steenburgh, 2012). The radar-derived precipitation estimates used in this study record this natural variability in precipitation in the two regions.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is important that these events were included due to their ability to greatly increase winter precipitation in the UCRB and LCRB (Rutz and Steenburgh, 2012). Atmospheric river events (sometimes known as Pineapple Express events) can also be tied to major Pacific climate modes such as the ENSO (Dettinger, 2004;Dettinger et al, 2011), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO; Dettinger, 2004), and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO; Reheis et al, 2012) in southern California.…”

Section: Climate Variability In the Nexrad Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraining frequency–magnitude–area relationships for rainfall and flood discharges using radar-derived precipitation estimates: example applications in the Upper and Lower Colorado River basins, USA

Orem

Pelletier

2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Flood-envelope curves (FECs) are useful for constraining the upper limit of possible flood discharges within drainage basins in a particular hydroclimatic region. Their usefulness, however, is limited by their lack of a well-defined recurrence interval. In this study we use radar-derived precipitation estimates to develop an alternative to the FEC method, i.e., the frequency-magnitude-area-curve (FMAC) method that incorporates recurrence intervals. The FMAC method is demonstrated in two well-studied US drainage basins, i.e., the Upper and Lower Colorado River basins (UCRB and LCRB, respectively), using Stage III Next-GenerationRadar (NEXRAD) gridded products and the diffusion-wave flow-routing algorithm. The FMAC method can be applied worldwide using any radar-derived precipitation estimates. In the FMAC method, idealized basins of similar contributing area are grouped together for frequencymagnitude analysis of precipitation intensity. These data are then routed through the idealized drainage basins of different contributing areas, using contributing-area-specific estimates for channel slope and channel width. Our results show that FMACs of precipitation discharge are power-law functions of contributing area with an average exponent of 0.82 ± 0.06 for recurrence intervals from 10 to 500 years. We compare our FMACs to published FECs and find that for wet antecedent-moisture conditions, the 500-year FMAC of flood discharge in the UCRB is on par with the US FEC for contributing areas of ∼ 10 2 to 10 3 km 2 . FMACs of flood discharge for the LCRB exceed the published FEC for the LCRB for contributing areas in the range of ∼ 10 3 to 10 4 km 2 . The FMAC method retains the power of the FEC method for constraining flood hazards in basins that are ungauged or have short flood records, yet it has the added advantage that it includes recurrence-interval information necessary for estimating event probabilities.

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Quantifying the role of atmospheric rivers in the interior western United States

Cited by 101 publications

References 13 publications

Assessing the climate‐scale variability of atmospheric rivers affecting western North America

Assessing the climate‐scale variability of atmospheric rivers affecting western North America

An event synchronization method to link heavy rainfall events and large‐scale atmospheric circulation features

Constraining frequency–magnitude–area relationships for rainfall and flood discharges using radar-derived precipitation estimates: example applications in the Upper and Lower Colorado River basins, USA

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