The 2015 drought in Washington State: a harbinger of things to come?

Marlier, Miriam E.; Xiao, Mu; Engel, Ruth; Livneh, Ben; Abatzoglou, John T.; Lettenmaier, Dennis P.

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa8fde

Cited by 68 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Table S1 provides the temporal coverage of all data sets used. The FM1000 (Cohen & Deeming, 1985) is a water-balance variable that uses precipitation, temperature, and humidity to track moisture content in large-diameter dead fuels and exhibits significant relationships to fire activity (e.g., Abatzoglou & Kolden, 2013;Marlier et al, 2017). See Text S3 for details.…”

Section: Earth's Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Observed Impacts of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Wildfire in California

et al. 2019

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Recent fire seasons have fueled intense speculation regarding the effect of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire in western North America and especially in California. During 1972-2018, California experienced a fivefold increase in annual burned area, mainly due to more than an eightfold increase in summer forest-fire extent. Increased summer forest-fire area very likely occurred due to increased atmospheric aridity caused by warming. Since the early 1970s, warm-season days warmed by approximately 1.4°C as part of a centennial warming trend, significantly increasing the atmospheric vapor pressure deficit (VPD). These trends are consistent with anthropogenic trends simulated by climate models. The response of summer forest-fire area to VPD is exponential, meaning that warming has grown increasingly impactful. Robust interannual relationships between VPD and summer forest-fire area strongly suggest that nearly all of the increase in summer forest-fire area during 1972-2018 was driven by increased VPD. Climate change effects on summer wildfire were less evident in nonforested lands. In fall, wind events and delayed onset of winter precipitation are the dominant promoters of wildfire. While these variables did not change much over the past century, background warming and consequent fuel drying is increasingly enhancing the potential for large fall wildfires. Among the many processes important to California's diverse fire regimes, warming-driven fuel drying is the clearest link between anthropogenic climate change and increased California wildfire activity to date.Plain Language Summary Since the early 1970s, California's annual wildfire extent increased fivefold, punctuated by extremely large and destructive wildfires in 2017 and 2018. This trend was mainly due to an eightfold increase in summertime forest-fire area and was very likely driven by drying of fuels promoted by human-induced warming. Warming effects were also apparent in the fall by enhancing the odds that fuels are dry when strong fall wind events occur. The ability of dry fuels to promote large fires is nonlinear, which has allowed warming to become increasingly impactful. Human-caused warming has already significantly enhanced wildfire activity in California, particularly in the forests of the Sierra Nevada and North Coast, and will likely continue to do so in the coming decades.

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Section: Earth's Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Observed Impacts of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Wildfire in California

et al. 2019

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“…Ultimately, these changes can reduce the amount, distribution, and connectivity of habitat for alpine species (Rehnus et al 2018). Snowpack has already decreased significantly over the past century, and years of extremely low snowpack due to unusually warm temperatures, as seen recently in western North America, are expected to become more common (Marlier et al 2017). Such snowpack anomalies could reveal the sensitivity of species to extreme weather and provide insight on species' adaptive capacity to cope with climate change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological consequences of anomalies in atmospheric moisture and snowpack

Johnston

Bruggeman

Beers

et al. 2019

Ecology

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Although increased frequency of extreme-weather events is one of the most secure predictions associated with contemporary climate change, effects of such events on distribution and abundance of climate-sensitive species remain poorly understood. Montane ecosystems may be especially sensitive to extreme weather because of complex abiotic and biotic interactions that propagate from climate-driven reductions in snowpack. Snowpack not only protects subnivean biotas from extreme cold, but also influences forage availability through timing of melt-off and water availability. We related relative abundances of an alpine mammal, the American pika (Ochotona princeps), to measures of weather and snowpack dynamics over an 8-yr period that included before and after a year of record-low snowpack in Washington, USA. We sought to (1) quantify any change in pika abundance associated with the snowpack anomaly and (2) identify aspects of weather and snowpack that influenced abundance of pikas. Pikas showed a 1-yr lag response to the snowpack anomaly and exhibited marked declines in abundance at elevations below 1,400 m simultaneous with increased abundances at higher elevations. Atmospheric moisture, indexed by vapor pressure deficit (VPD), was especially important, evidenced by strong support for the top-ranked model that included the interaction of VPD with snowpack duration. Notably, our novel application of VPD from gridded climate data for analyses of animal abundances shows strong potential for improving species distribution models because VPD represents an important aspect of weather that influences the physiology and habitat of biota. Pikas were apparently affected by cold stress without snowpack at mid elevations, whereas changes to forage associated with snowpack and VPD were influential at high and low elevations. Our results reveal context dependency in pika responses to weather and illustrate how snow drought can lead to rapid change in the abundance of subnivean animals.

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“…The changes in snowpack accumulation and ablation can alter flood and drought risk, potentially leading to higher winter floods and lower flow in spring and summer (Hamlet & Lettenmaier, ; Marlier et al, ; Tohver et al, ). Changes in streamflow regime can also have profound effects on water supply and aquatic ecosystems, potentially creating a mismatch between water availability and need (Sturm et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observed Spatiotemporal Changes in the Mechanisms of Extreme Water Available for Runoff in the Western United States

Yan

Sun

Wigmosta

et al. 2019

Geophysical Research Letters

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This paper presents the first study to identity, in historical records, regional changes in the mechanisms of extreme water available for runoff (W). We used a quality‐controlled Snowpack Telemetry data set (1979–2017) combined with the nonparametric regional Kendall test to examine changes in annual maximum W under four hydrometeorological conditions (melt only/rain‐on‐snow/all melt/all melt plus rainfall) over the mountainous regions of the western United States. Under a warming climate, our analyses indicated significant declining trends in annual maximum W at regional scale under all four conditions. The annual maximum of all melt plus rainfall decreased significantly by 15% in the southwestern United States, while the frequency of rain‐on‐snow events increased significantly by 32% in the northwestern United States. The annual maximum snowmelt only decreased significantly by 21% across the entire western United States. Our results confirmed that interaction between regional humidity and solar radiation with warming temperature helps drive these changes.

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The 2015 drought in Washington State: a harbinger of things to come?

Cited by 68 publications

References 39 publications

Observed Impacts of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Wildfire in California

Observed Impacts of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Wildfire in California

Ecological consequences of anomalies in atmospheric moisture and snowpack

Observed Spatiotemporal Changes in the Mechanisms of Extreme Water Available for Runoff in the Western United States

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