Stephanie A. McAfee

Increasing influence of air temperature on upper Colorado River streamflow

This empirical study examines the influence of precipitation, temperature, and antecedent soil moisture on upper Colorado River basin (UCRB) water year streamflow over the past century. While cool season precipitation explains most of the variability in annual flows, temperature appears to be highly influential under certain conditions, with the role of antecedent fall soil moisture less clear. In both wet and dry years, when flow is substantially different than expected given precipitation, these factors can modulate the dominant precipitation influence on streamflow. Different combinations of temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture can result in flow deficits of similar magnitude, but recent droughts have been amplified by warmer temperatures that exacerbate the effects of relatively modest precipitation deficits. Since 1988, a marked increase in the frequency of warm years with lower flows than expected, given precipitation, suggests continued warming temperatures will be an increasingly important influence in reducing future UCRB water supplies.

Consistency and the Lack Thereof in Pacific Decadal Oscillation Impacts on North American Winter Climate

AbstractImpacts of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) on North American climate were initially assessed over one negative (~1943 to 1976) and one positive (1977 to ~1990) PDO regime. Release of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis and the recent occurrence of negative PDO years make it possible to study the stability of PDO teleconnections. This analysis identified consistency in broad-scale teleconnection patterns but also critical differences in the amplitude of circulation pattern, temperature, and precipitation anomalies between comparable phases of the PDO. Many of these discrepancies were apparent after controlling for long-term trends and the impact of ENSO and were associated with variability in Atlantic Ocean temperatures and in the northern annular mode. Results from this study suggest that not all of the climate variability attributed to the PDO derives solely from fluctuations in Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs), that the climatic impact of these SST anomalies varies over time, or that t...

Methodological differences in projected potential evapotranspiration

There is growing concern that the higher temperatures expected with climate change will exacerbate drought extent, duration and severity by enhancing evaporative demand. Temperature-based estimates of potential evapotranspiration (PET) are popular for many eminently practical reasons and have served well in many research and management settings. However, a number of recent publications have questioned whether it is appropriate to use temperature-based PET estimates for long-term evaporative demand and drought projections, demonstrating that PET does not always track temperature. Where precipitation changes are modest, methodologically driven differences in the magnitude or direction of PET trends could lead to contrasting drought projections. Here I calculate PET by three methods (Hamon, Priestley-Taylor and Penman) and evaluate whether different techniques introduce disparities in the sign of PET change, the degree of model agreement, or the magnitude of those changes. Changes in temperature-based Hamon PET were more significantly and consistently positive than trends in PET estimated by other methods, and where methods agreed that summer PET would increase, trends in temperature-based PET were often larger in magnitude. The discrepancies in PET trends appear to derive from regional changes in incoming shortwave radiation, wind speed and humidity -- phenomena simpler equations cannot capture. Because multiple variables can influence trends in PET, it may be more justifiable to use data-intensive methods, where the source(s) of uncertainty can be identified, rather than using simpler methods that could mask important trends.

Recent spatiotemporal patterns in temperature extremes across conterminous United States

With a warming climate, understanding the physical dynamics of hot and cold extreme events has taken on increased importance for public health, infrastructure, ecosystems, food security, and other domains. Here we use a high-resolution spatial and temporal seamless gridded land surface forcing data set to provide an assessment of recent spatiotemporal patterns in temperature extremes over the conterminous United States (CONUS). We asked the following: (1) How are temperature extremes changing across the different regions of CONUS? (2) How do changes in extremes vary on seasonal, annual, and decadal scales? (3) How do changes in extremes relate to changes in mean conditions? And (4) do extremes relate to major modes of ocean-atmosphere variability? We derive a subset of the CLIMDEX extreme indices from the North American Land Data Assimilation phase 2 forcing data set. While there were warming trends in all indices, daytime temperature extremes warmed more than nighttime. Spring warming was the strongest and most extensive across CONUS, and summer experienced the strongest and most extensive decrease in cold extremes. Increase in winter warm extremes appeared weakening relative to the rapid 1950–1990 increase found in previous studies. The Northeast and Midwest experienced the most warming, while the Northwest and North Great Plains saw the least. We found changes in average temperatures were more associated with changes in cold extremes than warm extremes. Since 2006 there have been 5 years when more than 5% of the U.S. experienced at least 90 warm days, something not observed in the previous 25 years. The unusually warm first decade of 21st century could have been associated with the warm conditions of near El Nino–Southern Oscillation-neutral phase of the decade, and possibly amplified by anthropogenic forcing. The widespread, lengthy, and severe extreme hot events documented here during the past three decades underscore the need to implement thoughtful adaptation plans in the very near future, to the growing evidence of increasing warm extremes across United States.

Reconciling precipitation trends in Alaska: 2. Gridded data analyses

There is a great deal of interest in whether and how Alaskas precipitation is changing but little agreement in the existing peer-reviewed literature. To provide insight on this question, we have selected three commonly used 0.5° resolution gridded precipitation products that have long-term monthly data coverage (Climatic Research Unit TS3.10.1, Global Precipitation Climatology Centre Full Data Reanalysis version 5, and University of Delaware version 2.01) and evaluated their homogeneity and trends with multiple methods over two periods, 1950–2008 and 1980–2008. All three data sets displayed common broadscale features of Alaskas precipitation climatology, but there were substantial differences between them in terms of average precipitation amount and interannual variability. Temporal inhomogeneity was a significant concern over Alaska in gridded precipitation products, as it was in the states coastal weather stations. Although underlying station inhomogeneities were inherited to some extent by all of the gridded data sets, differences in data set construction contributed to dissimilarities in inhomogeneity, as well. There were contrasts in trends between the two time periods, and some minor discrepancies occurred as a function of the trend detection method, but the main disparities stemmed from choice of data set. Indeed, there were large areas where these data sets disagreed on both the sign and significance of precipitation trends. Until further analysis can resolve these differences, researchers using gridded precipitation data or evaluating studies based on such data should interpret results with extreme caution.

Evidence that Recent Warming is Reducing Upper Colorado River Flows

AbstractThe upper Colorado River basin (UCRB) is one of the primary sources of water for the western United States, and increasing temperatures likely will elevate the risk of reduced water supply in the basin. Although variability in water-year precipitation explains more of the variability in water-year UCRB streamflow than water-year UCRB temperature, since the late 1980s, increases in temperature in the UCRB have caused a substantial reduction in UCRB runoff efficiency (the ratio of streamflow to precipitation). These reductions in flow because of increasing temperatures are the largest documented temperature-related reductions since record keeping began. Increases in UCRB temperature over the past three decades have resulted in a mean UCRB water-year streamflow departure of −1306 million m3 (or −7% of mean water-year streamflow). Additionally, warm-season (April through September) temperature has had a larger effect on variability in water-year UCRB streamflow than the cool-season (October through Ma...