Lengthening Spring Season in Southwestern North America

Abstract:

Climate is changing rapidly in southwestern North America during the Spring season, a critically important transition season in terms of hydrology, ecosystem dynamics, and water resource management. Major rivers are snow-fed in mountainous headwaters but then flow through a monsoonal region with a Summer precipitation maximum; Spring is the dry season in between snowmelt and monsoon onset and is the principal wildfire season in the Southwest. Evaporation during the warm, dry Spring represents a major hydrologic loss in the surface water budget and is a principal cause of projections of significant decreases in post-snowmelt streamflow, during the first half of the growing season when demand for surface water for irrigated agriculture is highest. As temperatures increase, snowpack is expected to decrease and melt earlier, leading to a smaller and earlier peak in snowmelt runoff. Recent climate model projections suggest that monsoon onset should occur later in the year, delaying the summer rainy season. Each of these effects contributes to projections of a lengthening Spring season, at both the beginning and end of Spring. A longer, warmer Spring season is associated with significant surface drying and increased wildfire risk in the 21st Century across the Southwest. So far changes are observed at the beginning of spring in terms of temperature (increasing) and snowpack (decreasing). Detection of other changes, including metrics of the end of spring, has not been easy, in part due to the huge natural variability of precipitation that affects hydrologic variables in conjunction with temperature. This presentation describes efforts to diagnose and document observed changes in the transitions into and out of the Spring dry season in the Southwest, in variables such as temperature, snowmelt date, timing and magnitude of streamflow, and monsoon onset date.