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There is growing evidence that the rate of warming is amplified with elevation, such that high-mountain environments experience more rapid changes in temperature than environments at lower elevations. Elevation-dependent warming (EDW) can accelerate the rate of change in mountain ecosystems, cryospheric systems, hydrological regimes and biodiversity. Here we review important mechanisms that contribute towards EDW: snow albedo and surface-based feedbacks; water vapour changes and latent heat release; surface water vapour and radiative flux changes; surface heat loss and temperature change; and aerosols. All lead to enhanced warming with elevation (or at a critical elevation), and it is believed that combinations...
Climate policy developers and natural resource managers frequently desire high-resolution climate data to prepare for future effects of climate change. But they face a long-standing problem: the vast majority of climate models have been run at coarse resolutions—from hundreds of kilometers in global climate models (GCMs) down to 25–50 kilometers in regional climate models (RCMs).
Abstract (from PNAS): Recent decades have seen droughts across multiple US river basins that are unprecedented over the last century and potentially longer. Understanding the drivers of drought in a long-term context requires extending instrumental data with paleoclimatic data. Here, a network of new millennial-length streamflow reconstructions and a regional temperature reconstruction from tree rings place 20th and early 21st century drought severity in the Upper Missouri River basin into a long-term context. Across the headwaters of the United States’ largest river basin, we estimated region-wide, decadal-scale drought severity during the “turn-of-the-century drought” ca. 2000 to 2010 was potentially unprecedented...
Abstract (from http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.3417/2017006): The Earth system is undergoing rapid, profound anthropogenic change. The primary axes of change include not only the climate system, but also the spread of invasive species, altered biogeochemical and hydrological cycles, modified disturbance regimes, and land degradation and conversion. These factors are influencing the distribution of species and the structure and function of ecosystems worldwide, interacting with climatic stressors that may preclude the persistence of many current species distributions and communities. Ecological disturbances such as wildfires and insect outbreaks can interact with climate variability to precipitate abrupt change...
Severe droughts cause widespread tree mortality and decreased growth in forests across the globe. Forest managers are seeking strategies to increase forest resistance (minimizing negative impacts during the drought) and resilience (maximizing recovery rates following drought). Limited experimental evidence suggests that forests with particular structural characteristics have greater capacity to resist change and or recover ecosystem function in the face of drought. However, the applicability of these results to practical forest conservation and management remains unclear. This project utilized an existing network of eight long-term, operational-scale, forest management experiments from Arizona to Maine to examine...
This management brief summarizes the results of a project evaluating the scientific body of research on climate adaptation actions relevant to ecological drought. This adaptation science assessment evaluated strategies developed and prioritized by participants at regional adaptation workshops by synthesizing supporting evidence from the literature. The brief presents findings on the benefits and limitations of these climate adaptation options from the accompanying report, Extremes to Ex-Streams: Ecological Drought Adaptation in a Changing Climate.
Abstract (from ScienceDirect): The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has developed the PRObability of Streamflow PERmanence (PROSPER) model, a GIS raster-based empirical model that provides streamflow permanence probabilities (probabilistic predictions) of a stream channel having year-round flow for any unregulated and minimally-impaired stream channel in the Pacific Northwest region, U.S. The model provides annual predictions for 2004–2016 at a 30-m spatial resolution based on monthly or annually updated values of climatic conditions and static physiographic variables associated with the upstream basin. Predictions correspond to any pixel on the channel network consistent with the medium resolution National Hydrography...
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-016-2376-z): Drought is among the most insidious types of natural disasters and can have devastating economic and human health impacts. This research analyzes the relationship between two readily accessible drought indices—the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and Palmer Hydrologic Drought Index (PHDI)—and the damage incurred by such droughts in terms of monetary loss, over the 1975–2010 time period on monthly basis, for five states in the south-central USA. Because drought damage in the Spatial Hazards Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS™) is reported at the county level, statistical downscaling techniques were used to estimate...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gdj3.47/abstract): Two datasets of soil temperature observations collected at Norman, Oklahoma, USA, were analysed to study horizontal and vertical variability in their observations. The first dataset comprised 15-min resolution soil temperature observations from 20 September 2011 to 18 November 2013 in seven plots across a 10-m transect. In each plot, sensors were located at depths of 5, 10, and 30 cm. All seven plots observed fairly consistent maximum soil temperature observations during the spring, fall, and winter months. Starting in late May, the observed spread in soil temperatures across the 10-m transect increased significantly until August when the...
The responses of individual species to environmental changes can be manifested at multiple levels that range from individual-level (i.e., behavioral responses) to population-level (i.e., demographic) impacts. Major environmental changes that ultimately result in population level impacts are often first detected as individual-level responses. For example, herbivores respond to limited forage availability during drought periods by increasing the duration of foraging periods and expanding home range areas to compensate for the reduction in forage. However, if the individual-level responses are not sufficient to compensate for reduced forage availability, reduced survival and reproductive rates may result. We studied...
Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0174045): Several studies have projected increases in drought severity, extent and duration in many parts of the world under climate change. We examine sources of uncertainty arising from the methodological choices for the assessment of future drought risk in the continental US (CONUS). One such uncertainty is in the climate models’ expression of evaporative demand (E0), which is not a direct climate model output but has been traditionally estimated using several different formulations. Here we analyze daily output from two CMIP5 GCMs to evaluate how differences in E0 formulation, treatment of meteorological driving data, choice of GCM,...
Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Paleohydrologic records can provide unique, long-term perspectives on streamflow variability and hydroclimate for use in water resource planning. Such long-term records can also play a key role in placing both present day events and projected future conditions into a broader context than that offered by instrumental observations. However, relative to other major river basins across the western United States, a paucity of streamflow reconstructions has to date prevented the full application of such paleohydrologic information in the Upper Missouri River Basin. Here we utilize a set of naturalized streamflow records for the Upper Missouri and an expanded network of tree-ring records...
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/WCAS-D-16-0121.1): Much of the academic literature and policy discussions about sustainable development and climate change adaptation focus on poor and developing nations, yet many tribal communities inside the United States include marginalized peoples and developing nations who face structural barriers to effectively adapt to climate change. There is a need to critically examine diverse climate change risks for indigenous peoples in the United States and the many structural barriers that limit their ability to adapt to climate change. This paper uses a sustainable climate adaptation framework to outline the context and the relationships of power and authority,...
The Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) in west-central Wyoming is home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, who reside near and depend on water from the streams that feed into Wind River. In recent years, however, the region has experienced frequent severe droughts, which have affected tribal livelihoods and cultural activities. Scientists with the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NCCASC) at Colorado State University, the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and several other university and agency partners in the region worked in close partnership with tribal water managers to assess how drought affects the reservation, which included...
Abstract (from AMS100): Between water years 2012 and 2017, the Truckee–Carson river system in the western United States experienced both historic-low and record-high Sierra Nevada snowpack, anomalously warm temperatures, and winter and spring flooding. As part of an ongoing collaborative modeling research program in the river system, researchers conduct annual interviews with key local water managers to characterize local climate adaptation strategies and implementation barriers, and identify science information needs to prioritize ongoing research activities. This article presents new findings from a third wave of interviews conducted with the same water managers following the historic 2017 wet year. Comparison...
Streams are classified as perennial (flowing uninterrupted, year-round) or intermittent (flowing part of the year) or ephemeral (flowing only during rainfall events). The classifications of “streamflow permanence” were primarily established in the middle 20th century and are often outdated and inaccurate today if they were not adjusted for changes in land use, wildfires, or climate. Understanding where streams are perennial is important for a variety of reasons. For example, perennial streams receive special regulatory protections under a variety of statutes, and provide important habitat for fish, wildlife, and other species. To predict the likelihood that streams are perennial, we compiled nearly 25,000 observations...
Abstract (from RMetS): Over the Upper Colorado River basin (UCRB), temperatures in widely used gridded data products do not warm as much as mean temperatures from a stable set of U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations, located at generally lower elevations, in most months of the year. This is contrary to expectations of elevation‐dependent warming, which suggests that warming increases with elevation. These findings could reflect (a) a genuine absence of elevation‐dependent warming in the region, (b) systematic non‐climatic influences on either the USHCN stations or high‐elevation stations, including known inhomogeneities related to changes in the time of observation and instrumentation, or (c) suppression...