U.S. flag An official website of the United States government.
Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

i

Multi-year predictability of climate, drought, and wildfire in southwestern North America



Details

  • Journal Title:
    Scientific Reports
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
    CIMAR (Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research)
  • Description:
    Past severe droughts over North America have led to massive water shortages and increases in wildfire frequency. Triggering sources for multi-year droughts in this region include randomly occurring atmospheric blocking patterns, ocean impacts on atmospheric circulation, and climate’s response to anthropogenic radiative forcings. A combination of these sources translates into a difficulty to predict the onset and length of such droughts on multi-year timescales. Here we present results from a new multi-year dynamical prediction system that exhibits a high degree of skill in forecasting wildfire probabilities and drought for 10–23 and 10–45 months lead time, which extends far beyond the current seasonal prediction activities for southwestern North America. Using a state-of-the-art earth system model along with 3-dimensional ocean data assimilation and by prescribing the external radiative forcings, this system simulates the observed low-frequency variability of precipitation, soil water, and wildfire probabilities in close agreement with observational records and reanalysis data. The underlying source of multi-year predictability can be traced back to variations of the Atlantic/Pacific sea surface temperature gradient, external radiative forcings, and the low-pass filtering characteristics of soils.
  • Keywords:
  • Source:
    Sci Rep 7, 6568 (2017)
  • DOI:
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • Place as Subject:
    North America
  • Rights Information:
    CC BY
  • Compliance:
    Submitted
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha256:16832162a6764e968d04c72b4d65ff8e68c796bdee579f6b06e0273e86093ac7
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 5.86 MB ]
PREVIOUS
ON THIS PAGE
Details
The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners. As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
BACK TO TOP