Identifying the Holocene evolution of interannual climate variability in Southern California river runoff records.

Abstract:

Precipitation patterns in southern California are strongly correlated with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) climate variability during the 20^th Century. Heavy rainfall in southern California is generated by warm-wet storms associated with atmospheric rivers (ARs) producing flood events, while drought conditions occur when winter precipitation associated with north Pacific low pressure systems does not reach the region. Winter rainfall delivers siliciclastic sediment to Santa Barbara Basin (SBB), CA while spring summer marine productivity provides biogenic sediment resulting in a simple two component laminae couplet. Laminations are preserved in the low oxygen bottom of SBB providing a high temporal resolution paleoclimate record.

Here we present scanning XRF generated annually resolved elemental concentrations for the last 9.5 ka in SBB from SPR0901-03KC (34°16.99’N; 120°2.408’W) and MV0811-14JPC (34°16.54’N; 120°2.10’W) in ~586 m water depth. High siliciclastic elemental counts are interpreted as indicating increased river runoff, while low values indicate droughts. Floods events indicative of extreme precipitation events occur throughout the Holocene, however long intervals between floods occur 8.5-7 Ka, 5.6-6.4 Ka and 0.8-1.1 Ka. Notable droughts occur 5.6-6.1, 4.7-5.1, 3.5-4.1, 2.6, 2.1, 1.8, 1.1 and 0.9 Ka. Spectral analysis indicates silicilastic elemental peaks are close to an annual resolution, however annual tuning increases the power of the interannual frequencies without changing the frequency appreciably. High frequency variability is lost during drought intervals.