Dynamics, Variability, and Change in Seasonal Precipitation Reconstructions for North America
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15200442_Journal of Climate_Dy ...
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Final Published Version
Author
Stahle, David W.Cook, Edward R.
Burnette, Dorian J.
Torbenson, Max C. A.
Howard, Ian M.
Griffin, Daniel
Diaz, Jose Villanueva
Cook, Benjamin, I
Williams, A. Park
Watson, Emma
Sauchyn, David J.
Pederson, Neil
Woodhouse, Connie A.
Pederson, Gregory T.
Meko, David
Coulthard, Bethany
Crawford, Christopher J.
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Sch Geog & DevUniv Arizona, Lab Tree Ring Res
Issue Date
2020-04
Metadata
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AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOCCitation
Stahle, D. W., Cook, E. R., Burnette, D. J., Torbenson, M. C., Howard, I. M., Griffin, D., ... & Crawford, C. J. (2020). Dynamics, variability, and change in seasonal precipitation reconstructions for North America. Journal of Climate, 33(8), 3173-3195.Journal
JOURNAL OF CLIMATERights
© 2020 American Meteorological Society.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Cool- and warm-season precipitation totals have been reconstructed on a gridded basis for North America using 439 tree-ring chronologies correlated with December-April totals and 547 different chronologies correlated with May-July totals. These discrete seasonal chronologies are not significantly correlated with the alternate season; the December-April reconstructions are skillful over most of the southern and western United States and north-central Mexico, and the May-July estimates have skill over most of the United States, southwestern Canada, and northeastern Mexico. Both the strong continent-wide El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signal embedded in the cool-season reconstructions and the Arctic Oscillation signal registered by the warm-season estimates faithfully reproduce the sign, intensity, and spatial patterns of these ocean-atmospheric influences on North American precipitation as recorded with instrumental data. The reconstructions are included in the North American Seasonal Precipitation Atlas (NASPA) and provide insight into decadal droughts and pluvials. They indicate that the sixteenth-century megadrought, the most severe and sustained North American drought of the past 500 years, was the combined result of three distinct seasonal droughts, each bearing unique spatial patterns potentially associated with seasonal forcing from ENSO, the Arctic Oscillation, and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. Significant 200-500-yr-long trends toward increased precipitation have been detected in the cool- and warm-season reconstructions for eastern North America. These seasonal precipitation changes appear to be part of the positive moisture trend measured in other paleoclimate proxies for the eastern area that began as a result of natural forcing before the industrial revolution and may have recently been enhanced by anthropogenic climate change.Note
6 month embargo; first published online 06 March 2020ISSN
0894-8755EISSN
1520-0442Version
Final published versionae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0270.1