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Declining annual streamflow distributions in the Pacific Northwest United States, 1948–2006
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Much of the discussion on climate change and water in the western United States centers on decreased snowpack and earlier spring runoff. Although increasing variability in annual flows has been noted, the nature of those changes is largely unexplored. We tested for trends in the distribution of annual runoff using quantile regression at 43 gages in the Pacific Northwest. Seventy-two percent of the stations showed significant (a = 0.10) declines in the 25th percentile annual flow, with half of the stations exceeding a 29% decline and a maximum decline of 47% between 1948 and 2006. Fewer stations showed statistically significant declines in either median or mean annual flow, and only five had a significant change in the 75th percentile, demonstrating that increases in variance result primarily from a trend of increasing dryness in dry years. The asymmetric trends in streamflow distributions have implications for water management and ecology well beyond those of shifted timing alone, affect both rain and snow-dominated watersheds, and contribute to earlier timing trends in high- elevation watersheds.
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Observed relation between evapotranspiration and soil moisture in the North American monsoon region
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Soil moisture control on evapotranspiration is poorly understood in ecosystems experiencing seasonal greening. In this study, we utilize a set of multi-year observations at four eddy covariance sites along a latitudinal gradient in vegetation greening to infer the ET-q relation during the North American monsoon. Results reveal significant seasonal, interannual and ecosystem variations in the observed ET-q relation directly linked to vegetation greening. In particular, monsoon-dominated ecosystems adjust their ET-q relation, through changes in unstressed ET and plant stress threshold, to cope with differences in water availability. Comparisons of the observed relations to the North American Regional Reanalysis dataset reveal large biases that increase where vegetation greening is more significant. The analysis presented here can be used to guide improvements in land surface model parameterization in water-limited ecosystems.
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Impact of reduced Arctic sea ice on Greenland ice sheet variability in a warmer than present climate
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A global climate model with interactive vegetation and a coupled ice sheet-shelf component is used to test the response of the Greenland ice sheet (GIS) to increased sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and reduced sea ice (SI) cover during the mid-Pliocene warm period (∼3 Ma) as reconstructed from proxy records. Seasonally open water in the Arctic and North Atlantic are shown to alter regional radiation budgets, storm tracks, and moisture and heat advection into the Greenland interior, with increases in temperature rather than precipitation dominating the ice sheets response. When applied to an initially glaciated Greenland, the presumed warm, ice-free Pliocene ocean conditions induce rapid melting of nearly the entire ice sheet and preclude a modern-like GIS from (re)growing, regardless of orbital forcing. The sensitivity of Greenland to imposed Pliocene ocean conditions may have serious implications for the future response of the ice sheet to continued warming in the Arctic basin.
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Climate commitment in an uncertain world
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Climate commitment—the warming that would still occur given no further human influence—is a fundamental metric for both science and policy. It informs us of the minimum climate change we face and, moreover, depends only on our knowledge of the natural climate system. Studies of the climate commitment due to CO2 find that global temperature would remain near current levels, or even decrease slightly, in the millennium following the cessation of emissions. However, this result overlooks the important role of the non‐CO2 greenhouse gases and aerosols. This paper shows that global energetics require an immediate and sig- nificant warming following the cessation of emissions as aerosols are quickly washed from the atmosphere, and the large uncertainty in current aerosol radiative forcing implies a large uncertainty in the climate commitment. Fundamental constraints preclude Earth returning to pre‐industrial temperatures for the indefinite future. These same constraints mean that observations are currently unable to eliminate the possibility that we are already beyond the point where the ultimate warming will exceed dangerous levels. Models produce a narrower range of climate commitment, but under- sample observed forcing constraints.
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Changes in winter precipitation extremes for the western United States under a warmer climate as simulated by regional climate models
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We find a consistent and statistically significant increase in the intensity of future extreme winter precipitation events over the western United States, as simulated by an ensemble of regional climate models (RCMs) driven by IPCC AR4 global climate models (GCMs). All eight simulations analyzed in this work consistently show an increase in the intensity of extreme winter precipitation with the multi-model mean projecting an area-averaged 12.6% increase in 20-year return period and 14.4% increase in 50-year return period daily precipitation. In contrast with extreme precipitation, the multi-model ensemble shows a decrease in mean winter precipitation of approximately 7.5% in the southwestern US, while the interior west shows less statistically robust increases.
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Quantifying the negative feedback of vegetation to greenhouse warming: A modeling approach
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Several climate models indicate that in a 2 × CO2 environment, temperature and precipitation would increase and runoff would increase faster than precipitation. These models, however, did not allow the vegetation to increase its leaf density as a response to the physiological effects of increased CO2 and consequent changes in climate. Other assessments included these interactions but did not account for the vegetation down‐regulation to reduce plant’s photosynthetic activity and as such resulted in a weak vegetation negative response. When we combine these interactions in climate simulations with 2 × CO2, the associated increase in precipitation contributes primarily to increase evapotranspiration rather than surface runoff, consistent with observations, and results in an additional cooling effect not fully accounted for in previous simulations with elevated CO2. By accelerating the water cycle, this feedback slows but does not alleviate the projected warming, reducing the land surface warming by 0.6°C. Compared to previous studies, these results imply that long term negative feedback from CO2‐induced increases in vegetation density could reduce temperature following a stabilization of CO2 concentration.
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Space observations of inland water bodies show rapid surface warming since 1985
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Surface temperatures were extracted from nighttime thermal infrared imagery of 167 large inland water bodies distributed worldwide beginning in 1985 for the months July through September and January through March. Results indicate that the mean nighttime surface water temperature has been rapidly warming for the period 1985–2009 with an average rate of 0.045 ± 0.011°C yr−1 and rates as high as 0.10 ± 0.01°C yr−1. Worldwide the data show far greater warming in the mid‐ and high latitudes of the northern hemisphere than in low latitudes and the southern hemisphere. The analysis provides a new independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change throughout the world and indicates that water bodies in some regions warm faster than regional air temperature. The data have not been homogenized into a single unified inland water surface temperature dataset, instead the data from each satellite instrument have been treated separately and cross compared. Future work will focus on developing a single unified dataset which may improve uncertainties from any inter‐satellite biases.
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Interdependence of groundwater dynamics and land-energy feedbacks under climate change
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Climate change will have a significant impact on the hydrologic cycle, creating changes in freshwater resources, land cover and land–atmosphere feedbacks. Recent studies have investigated the response of groundwater to climate change but do not account for energy feedbacks across the complete hydrologic cycle1,2. Although land-surface models have begun to include an operational groundwater-type component3–5, they do not include physically based lateral surface and subsurface flow and allow only for vertical transport processes. Here we use a variably saturated groundwater flow model with integrated overland flow and land-surface model processes6–8 to examine the interplay between water and energy flows in a changing climate for the southern Great Plains, USA, an important agricultural region that is susceptible to drought. We compare three scenario simulations with modified atmospheric forcing in terms of temperature and precipitation with a simulation of present-day climate. We find that groundwater depth, which results from lateral water flow at the surface and subsurface, determines the relative susceptibility of regions to changes in temperature and precipitation. This groundwater control is critical to understand processes of recharge and drought in a changing climate.
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The Myth of Smart Growth
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“Smart growth” is an urban growth management strategy that applies planning and design principles intended to mitigate the impacts of continued growth. If properly applied, these principles represent a positive contribution to new urban development. However, the rhetoric of “smart growth” is that population levels and growth rates are not the problem; it’s merely a matter of how we grow. According to the “smart growth” program, if we are less wasteful and more efficient in our urban growth, we can keep growing and everything will work out fine. The “smart growth” approach is fundamentally pro-growth and does not envision an end to growth or a need to end growth.
“Smart growth” is cast as a comprehensive solution, whereas it is merely a potential means of modestly reducing the environmental, social, and economic impacts of continued growth while failing to address its inevitable consequences. The “smart growth” formula has been used to discount and transform legitimate public concerns about the amount and pace of growth into a discussion about how we should best continue growing.
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Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and Preparing for Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface: Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-299. Fort Collins, CO. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 36 p.
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Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America’s wildland areas. However, the rising number of homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), associated impacts on lives and property from wildfire, and escalating costs of wildfire management have led to an urgent need for communities to become “fire-adapted.” We present maps of the conterminous United States that illustrate historical natural fire regimes, the wildland-urban interface, and the number and location of structures burned since 1999. We outline a sampler of actions, programs, and community planning and development options to help decrease the risks of and damages from wildfire.
Key Words: wildfire, community planning, fire-adapted, wildland-urban interface, defensible space
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