The climate of the US Southwest

Sheppard, Paul R.; Comrie, Andrew C.; Packin, Gregory D.; Angersbach, Kurt; Hughes, Malcolm K.

doi:10.3354/cr021219

Cited by 508 publications

(416 citation statements)

References 95 publications

(111 reference statements)

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“…Precipitation variability, including recurrent drought conditions, has typified the climate of the American southwest (e.g., New Mexico, Arizona) for thousands of years (Grissino-Mayer, 1996;Sheppard et al, 2002). Dendrochronological studies and historical reports show that past droughts have caused extensive vegetation mortality across this region, best documented for the severe droughts of the 1580s, 1890s to early 1900s, 1950s, and the most recent persistent drought that began in 1996 Breshears, 1998, 2002;Swetnam and Betancourt, 1998).…”

Section: Drought-induced Dieback Of Forests and Woodlands In New Meximentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonlinear dynamics in ecosystem response to climatic change: Case studies and policy implications

Burkett

Wilcox

Stottlemyer

et al. 2005

Ecological Complexity

237

177

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Many biological, hydrological, and geological processes are interactively linked in ecosystems. These ecological phenomena normally vary within bounded ranges, but rapid, nonlinear changes to markedly different conditions can be triggered by even small differences if threshold values are exceeded. Intrinsic and extrinsic ecological thresholds can lead to effects that cascade among systems, precluding accurate modeling and prediction of system response to climate change. Ten case studies from North America illustrate how changes in climate can lead to rapid, threshold-type responses within ecological communities; the case studies also highlight the role of human activities that alter the rate or direction of system response to climate change. Understanding and anticipating nonlinear dynamics are important aspects of adaptation planning since responses of biological resources to changes in the physical climate system are not necessarily proportional and sometimes, as in the case of complex ecological systems, inherently nonlinear. Published by Elsevier B.V.

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Section: Drought-induced Dieback Of Forests and Woodlands In New Meximentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonlinear dynamics in ecosystem response to climatic change: Case studies and policy implications

Burkett

Wilcox

Stottlemyer

et al. 2005

Ecological Complexity

237

177

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“…There have also been studies relating tree rings to the Palmer's drought severity index (PDSI), which is based on water balance calculations for a generic soil (e.g. Puckett, 1981;Meko et al, 1993;Cook et al, 2004;Leavitt, 2002;Sheppard et al, 2002;Buckley et al, 2004;Hidalgo, 2004;Zhang et al, 2004a;Taylor and Beaty, 2005). In an effort to reconstruct the 1000 year precipitation history in northeastern Qaidam Basin, Shao et al (2005) found strong correlations between tree-ring widths and a variety of climate variables, including June maximum and mean temperatures, pan evaporation rate, relative humidity, and monthly mean vapour pressure, which are all directly or indirectly related to the water balance process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconstruction of a 1436‐year soil moisture and vegetation water use history based on tree‐ring widths from Qilian junipers in northeastern Qaidam Basin, northwestern China

Yin

Shao

Qin

et al. 2007

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Tree-ring widths have been used widely in studies of environmental changes and reconstructions of past climate. Eleven tree-ring chronologies of approximately 800-1500 years long were developed from Qilian junipers (Sabina przewalskii Kom.) for northeastern Qaidam Basin, along the margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Previous studies have revealed that water usage stress is the most limiting factor for tree growth in the study region. To evaluate the impact of the combined effects of temperature and precipitation changes over time, we performed water balance modelling using 1955-2002 meteorological data. We found that the tree-ring widths were strongly correlated with variables representing soil moisture conditions obtained from the water balance model. Specifically we considered actual evapotranspiration (AE) to represent the combined effect of water use demand and moisture availability, deficit as the difference between potential evapotranspiration (PE) and AE to represent the severity of water use stress, and relative soil moisture as the measure of moisture availability. For certain individual monthly and seasonal combinations, the tree-ring chronologies explained up to 80% of the variation in the soil moisture variables in regression analysis, indicating very good potential for reconstruction of regional soil moisture conditions in the past. These soil moisture variables outperformed precipitation and Palmer's drought severity index in most cases. We reconstructed the soil moisture conditions from 566 AD to 2001, which revealed major dry and wet periods and a general trend toward a wetter condition during the most recent 300 years. By comparing with other proxies in the region, we concluded that the moisture conditions reconstructed from tree-ring widths very well reflected the climate variability at the interannual and interdecadal scales.

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“…We choose to perform the numerical simulations for the winter season in Arizona, a region with dramatic contrasts in topography and local rainfall patterns [18][19][20] that provide an ideal test ground for the impact of model resolution. We choose winter because numerical models, whether global or regional, are widely known to produce substantial biases in North American summer monsoon (e.g., [21,22]), while their performance for wintertime precipitation is generally more robust.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Climate Simulation for Arizona: Impact of Resolution on Precipitation

Sharma

Huang

2012

Advances in Meteorology

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This study performs regional climate simulations for Arizona, a region with complicated terrain. The dependence of simulated rainfall on model resolution is explore by climate downscaling experiments using the Weather Research and Forecasting model. The model's horizontal resolution was refined from 12 to 6, then to 3 km. The total rainfall for winter and for different subdomains of Arizona is found to increase substantially with the refinement from 12 to 6 km grid. A further refinement to 3 km leads to a smaller change in rainfall, indicating numerical convergence at that scale. Comparisons with observations revealed that the 6 and 3 km runs produced excessive rainfall for winter while the 12 km simulations are closer to observation. This implies that the parameterization schemes for rainfall are not resolution independent, thus a refinement of resolution does not guarantee better results. It cautions against hastily pushing for increasingly higher resolution in practical downscaling simulations. An analysis of the simulated hourly rainfall shows that the 3 km runs produce significantly more extreme rainfall events than the 12 km runs. The 6 and 3 km runs also produced more complicated spatial patterns of seasonal rainfall and vertical velocity, reflecting the influence of fine-scale topography.

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The climate of the US Southwest

Abstract: This paper summarizes the current state of knowledge of the climate of southwest USA (the 'Southwest'). Low annual precipitation, clear skies, and year-round warm climate over much of the Southwest are due in large part to a quasi-permanent subtropical high-pressure ridge over the region.

Cited by 508 publications

References 95 publications

Nonlinear dynamics in ecosystem response to climatic change: Case studies and policy implications

Nonlinear dynamics in ecosystem response to climatic change: Case studies and policy implications

Reconstruction of a 1436‐year soil moisture and vegetation water use history based on tree‐ring widths from Qilian junipers in northeastern Qaidam Basin, northwestern China

Regional Climate Simulation for Arizona: Impact of Resolution on Precipitation

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