Role of Moisture Transport and Recycling in Characterizing Droughts: Perspectives from Two Recent U.S. Droughts and the CFSv2 System
Open Access
- 1 January 2019
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Journal of Hydrometeorology
- Vol. 20 (1), 139-154
- https://doi.org/10.1175/jhm-d-18-0159.1
Abstract
We investigate the role of moisture transport and recycling in characterizing two recent drought events in Texas (2011) and the Upper Midwest (2012) by analyzing the precipitation, evapotranspiration, precipitable water, and soil moisture data from the Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) analysis. Next, we evaluate the CFSv2 forecasts in terms of their ability to capture different drought signals as reflected in the analysis data. Precipitation from both sources is partitioned into recycled and advected components using a moisture accounting–based precipitation recycling model. All four variables reflected drought signals through their anomalously low values, while precipitation and evapotranspiration had the strongest signals. Drought in Texas was dominated by the differences in moisture transport, whereas in the Upper Midwest, the absence of strong precipitation-generating mechanisms was a crucial factor. Reduced advection from the tropical and midlatitude Atlantic contributed to the drought in Texas. The Upper Midwest experienced reduced contributions from recycling, terrestrial sources, the midlatitude Pacific, and the tropical Atlantic. In both cases, long-range moisture transport from oceanic sources was reduced during the corresponding drought years. June and August in Texas and July and August in the Upper Midwest were the driest months, and in both cases, drought was alleviated by the end of August. Moisture from terrestrial sources most likely contributed to alleviating drought intensity in such conditions, even with negative anomalies. The forecasts showed noticeable differences as compared to the analysis for multiple variables in both regions, which could be attributed to several factors as discussed in this paper.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NA15OAR4310091)
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NA14OAR4310236)
This publication has 53 references indexed in Scilit:
- Causes and Predictability of the 2012 Great Plains DroughtBulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2014
- Oceanic sources of continental precipitation and the correlation with sea surface temperatureWater Resources Research, 2013
- On the "well-mixed" assumption and numerical 2-D tracing of atmospheric moistureAtmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2013
- U.S. temperature and drought: Recent anomalies and trendsEos, 2012
- Seamless Advective Blending of Total Precipitable Water Retrievals from Polar-Orbiting SatellitesJournal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 2011
- Intensification of Summer Rainfall Variability in the Southeastern United States during Recent DecadesJournal of Hydrometeorology, 2010
- Spatial extent of the North American Monsoon: Increased cross‐regional linkages via atmospheric pathwaysGeophysical Research Letters, 2009
- The multi‐institution North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS): Utilizing multiple GCIP products and partners in a continental distributed hydrological modeling systemJournal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2004
- The Estimation of Regional Precipitation Recycling. Part I: Review of Recycling ModelsJournal of Climate, 2001
- New definitions for moisture recycling and the relationship with land-use changes in the SahelJournal of Hydrology, 1995