Oceanic Drivers of Widespread Summer Droughts in the United States Over the Common Era

Seung H. Baek; Nathan J. Steiger; Jason E. Smerdon; Richard Seager

doi:10.1029/2019GL082838

Oceanic Drivers of Widespread Summer Droughts in the United States Over the Common Era

Seung H. Baek^*, Nathan J. Steiger, Jason E. Smerdon, Richard Seager

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

We examine oceanic drivers of widespread droughts over the contiguous United States (herein pan-CONUS droughts) during the Common Era in what is one of the first analyses of the new Paleo Hydrodynamics Data Assimilation (PHYDA) product. The canonical understanding of oceanic influences on North American hydroclimate suggests that pan-CONUS droughts are forced by a contemporaneous cold tropical Pacific Ocean and a warm tropical Atlantic Ocean. We test this hypothesis using the paleoclimate record. Composite analyses find a robust association between pan-CONUS drought events and cold tropical Pacific conditions, but not with warm Atlantic conditions. Similarly, a self-organizing map analysis shows that pan-CONUS drought years are most commonly associated with a global sea surface temperature pattern displaying strong La Niña and cold Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) conditions. Our results confirm previous model-based findings for the instrumental period and show that cold tropical Pacific Ocean conditions are the principal driver of pan-CONUS droughts on annual timescales.

Original language	American English
Pages (from-to)	8271-8280
Number of pages	10
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	46
Issue number	14
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082838
State	Published - 2019
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by NSF grants AGS-1243204, AGS-1401400, and AGS-1805490. The 100-member ensemble and the ensemble mean of the Paleo Hydrodynamics Data Assimilation product are publicly available at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1154913. The Living Blended Drought Atlas version of the North American Drought Atlas is publicly available at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/19119. The CAM5 experiments are publicly available at http://magog.ldeo.columbia.edu:81/home/.dlee/.cam5_goga/. LDEO contribution #8335. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful evaluations of our manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
©2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

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title = "Oceanic Drivers of Widespread Summer Droughts in the United States Over the Common Era",

abstract = "We examine oceanic drivers of widespread droughts over the contiguous United States (herein pan-CONUS droughts) during the Common Era in what is one of the first analyses of the new Paleo Hydrodynamics Data Assimilation (PHYDA) product. The canonical understanding of oceanic influences on North American hydroclimate suggests that pan-CONUS droughts are forced by a contemporaneous cold tropical Pacific Ocean and a warm tropical Atlantic Ocean. We test this hypothesis using the paleoclimate record. Composite analyses find a robust association between pan-CONUS drought events and cold tropical Pacific conditions, but not with warm Atlantic conditions. Similarly, a self-organizing map analysis shows that pan-CONUS drought years are most commonly associated with a global sea surface temperature pattern displaying strong La Ni{\~n}a and cold Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) conditions. Our results confirm previous model-based findings for the instrumental period and show that cold tropical Pacific Ocean conditions are the principal driver of pan-CONUS droughts on annual timescales.",

author = "Baek, {Seung H.} and Steiger, {Nathan J.} and Smerdon, {Jason E.} and Richard Seager",

note = "Funding Information: This work was supported in part by NSF grants AGS-1243204, AGS-1401400, and AGS-1805490. The 100-member ensemble and the ensemble mean of the Paleo Hydrodynamics Data Assimilation product are publicly available at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1154913. The Living Blended Drought Atlas version of the North American Drought Atlas is publicly available at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/19119. The CAM5 experiments are publicly available at http://magog.ldeo.columbia.edu:81/home/.dlee/.cam5_goga/. LDEO contribution #8335. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful evaluations of our manuscript. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright}2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.",

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Oceanic Drivers of Widespread Summer Droughts in the United States Over the Common Era

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