A31I-07
Spring Land Temperature Anomalies in Northwestern U.S. and Southern Plains Summer Extreme: Texas Droughts and Floods
Wednesday, 16 December 2015: 09:30
3006 (Moscone West)
Yongkang Xue1, Catalina M Oaida2, Ismaila Diallo3, Ratko Vasic4, J David Neelin3, Suosuo Li5, Jiwoo Lee3, Fernando De Sales6, Wei Li4, David A Robinson7 and Yuejian Zhu8, (1)University of California Los Angeles, Department of Geography, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (2)California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (3)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (4)NOAA/NCEP/EMC, College Park, MD, United States, (5)CAS Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijng, China, (6)San Diego State University, Geography, San Diego, CA, United States, (7)Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick, NJ, United States, (8)NOAA, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
Recurrent drought and associated heatwave as well as flood episodes are important features of the Southern Plains regional climate, such as the 2011 Texas drought and the 2015 Texas flood. Many studies have examined the remote connection between sea surface temperature (SST) changes and conterminous U.S. droughts and flood. However, less attention has been devoted to effects of large-scale land surface temperature changes, over shorter but still considerable distances, on droughts and flood. The present study combines two types of evidence: climate observations and model simulations. Our analysis of observational data shows that springtime land temperature in the U.S. Northwest is significantly correlated with rainfall anomalies and heat in the Southern Plains. Our model simulations of the 2011 Southern Plains drought and 2015 flood confirm the observed relationship between land temperature anomaly and extreme and suggest that the remote effect of land temperature changes in the U.S. Northwest on Southern Plains extreme is probably as large as the more familiar effects of SSTs and atmospheric internal variability. We conclude that the cool 2011 springtime climate conditions in the U.S. Northwest increased the probability of summer drought and abnormal heat in the Southern Plains. The preliminary results for the 2015 flood will also be presented. The present study suggests that catastrophic consequences likely occur in a region when forcing from ocean and land combine synergistically to favor an extreme and that there is a potential for skillful seasonal predictions of U.S. Southern Plains extreme when such facts as ones presented here are considered.
