Some Causes of United States Drought

Namias, Jerome

doi:10.1175/1520-0450(1983)022<0030:scousd>2.0.co;2

Cited by 124 publications

(86 citation statements)

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“…Thus, the duration of major drought may have been greater at times during the 2,000 years, such that high-salinity intervals were more persistent than in the 20th century, a pattern evident in other records from the western United States (Woodhouse and Overpeck, 1998). This postulated change in the duration of dry periods implies shifts in the persistence and strength of the atmospheric circulation patterns associated with drought (Higgins et al, 1997;Namias, 1983;Trenberth et al, 1988) on multidecadal time scales. Recent studies from the northern Great Plains and western North America (Cook et al, 1997;Dean, 1997;Laird et al, 1996b;Yu and Ito, 1999) have shown a correlation between solar forcing and centennial-and decadal-scale drought patterns.…”

Section: Late-holocene Climate Variation and Its Causesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Hydrologic Variation in the Northern Great Plains During the Last Two Millennia

et al. 2000

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Reconstructions of lake-water salinity at decadal resolution for the last 2,000 years are compared among three lakes in North Dakota to infer regional patterns of drought. The intersite comparisons are used to distinguish local variation in climate or hydrology from regional patterns of change. At one lake, diatom-inferred salinity and lake-water Mg/Ca inferred from ostracode shell chemistry are coherent, both in terms of direction and magnitude of change, indicating that each is a robust technique for reconstructing lake-water chemistry. The data show that the last 2,000 years have been characterized by frequent shifts between high and low salinity, suggesting shifts between dry and moist periods. Long intervals of high salinity suggest periods of multiple decades when droughts were intense and frequent, thus indicating times when drought was more persistent than in the 20th century. Both the Medieval Period and Little Ice Age were hydrologically complex, and there is no clear evidence to suggest that either interval was coherent or unusual in effective moisture relative to long-term patterns. Differences among the three sites may be attributed to variation in local hydrology, and these differences emphasize the need for multiple sites in deriving regional climate interpretations from paleoecological data.

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Section: Late-holocene Climate Variation and Its Causesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Hydrologic Variation in the Northern Great Plains During the Last Two Millennia

et al. 2000

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“…The SST time series (Fig. 7a, dark bars) displays large positive and negative fluctuations in El Niñ o (e.g., 1957, 1965, 1972, 1983, 1993, and 1997) and La Niñ a (e.g., 1950, 1955, 1964, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1988, and 1999 years, respectively. A trend toward warmer SSTs starting in the late 1970s is also discernible, as reported by Trenberth and Hurrell (1994).…”

Section: B Covariability With Sstsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compared to warm season rainfall in the Great Plains (e.g., Namias 1983;Chang and Wallace 1987;Laird et al 1996) and the North American monsoon region (Higgins et al 2003), the variability of Southeast summer precipitation has received less attention. In terms of seasonal mean precipitation and its variability, however, summer rainfall in the Southeast constitutes an important part of warm season precipitation over the continental United States.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intensification of Summer Rainfall Variability in the Southeastern United States during Recent Decades

Wang

Kumar

et al. 2010

Journal of Hydrometeorology

127

120

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The variability of summer precipitation in the southeastern United States is examined in this study using 60-yr (1948-2007) rainfall data. The Southeast summer rainfalls exhibited higher interannual variability with more intense summer droughts and anomalous wetness in the recent 30 years than in the prior 30 years . Such intensification of summer rainfall variability was consistent with a decrease of light (0.1-1 mm day 21 ) and medium (1-10 mm day 21 ) rainfall events during extremely dry summers and an increase of heavy (.10 mm day 21) rainfall events in extremely wet summers. Changes in rainfall variability were also accompanied by a southward shift of the region of maximum zonal wind variability at the jet stream level in the latter period. The covariability between the Southeast summer precipitation and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) is also analyzed using the singular value decomposition (SVD) method. It is shown that the increase of Southeast summer precipitation variability is primarily associated with a higher SST variability across the equatorial Atlantic and also SST warming in the Atlantic.

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“…Also, Lupo et al (2012b) studied the summer of 2010 drought that impacted western Russia, including the Belgorod region, which was due to strong and persistent blocking. Studying warm extremes in the cUSA has not been performed recently, although anomalous summer season warmth was studied previously (Namias, 1982(Namias, , 1983Lupo and Bosart, 1999). The former studies attributed anomalous summer season warmth to enhanced ridging, while the latter study examined precursors to the 1980 drought.…”

Section: Interannual and Interdecadal Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%