TY - JOUR
T1 - Basinwide hydroclimatic drought in the Colorado river basin
AU - McCabe, Gregory J.
AU - Wolock, David M.
AU - Woodhouse, Connie A.
AU - Pederson, Gregory T.
AU - McAfee, Stephanie A.
AU - Gray, Stephen
AU - Csank, Adam
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. We thank Jesse Dickinson (U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona) and anonymous reviewers for comments that helped to improve the paper. Research support was provided through the U.S. Geological Survey Water and Land Resources Mission Areas, and the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. government.
Funding Information:
We thank Jesse Dickinson (U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona) and anonymous reviewers for comments that helped to improve the paper. Research support was provided through the U.S. Geological Survey Water and Land Resources Mission Areas, and the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. Any use of trade, ?rm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsementby the U.S. government. Data availability statement: Monthly data from the Parameter?Elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) are available from the PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University, and the summer Palmer drought severity index reconstructions from the Cook et al. (2010) Living Blended Drought Atlas (LBDA) are available online (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/19119.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Meteorological Society.
PY - 2020/6
Y1 - 2020/6
N2 - The Colorado River basin (CRB) supplies water to approximately 40 million people and is essential to hydropower generation, agriculture, and industry. In this study, a monthly water balance model is used to compute hydroclimatic water balance components (i.e., potential evapotranspiration, actual evapotranspiration, and runoff) for the period 1901–2014 across the entire CRB. The time series of monthly runoff is aggregated to compute water-year runoff and then used to identify drought periods in the basin. For the 1901– 2014 period, eight basinwide drought periods were identified. The driest drought period spanned years 1901–04, whereas the longest drought period occurred during 1943–56. The eight droughts were primarily driven by winter precipitation deficits rather than warm temperature anomalies. In addition, an analysis of prehistoric drought for the CRB—computed using tree-ring-based reconstructions of the Palmer drought severity index—indicates that during some past centuries drought frequency was higher than during the twentieth century and that some centuries experienced droughts that were much longer than those during the twentieth century. More frequent or longer droughts than those that occurred during the twentieth century, combined with continued warming associated with climate change, may lead to substantial future water deficits in the CRB.
AB - The Colorado River basin (CRB) supplies water to approximately 40 million people and is essential to hydropower generation, agriculture, and industry. In this study, a monthly water balance model is used to compute hydroclimatic water balance components (i.e., potential evapotranspiration, actual evapotranspiration, and runoff) for the period 1901–2014 across the entire CRB. The time series of monthly runoff is aggregated to compute water-year runoff and then used to identify drought periods in the basin. For the 1901– 2014 period, eight basinwide drought periods were identified. The driest drought period spanned years 1901–04, whereas the longest drought period occurred during 1943–56. The eight droughts were primarily driven by winter precipitation deficits rather than warm temperature anomalies. In addition, an analysis of prehistoric drought for the CRB—computed using tree-ring-based reconstructions of the Palmer drought severity index—indicates that during some past centuries drought frequency was higher than during the twentieth century and that some centuries experienced droughts that were much longer than those during the twentieth century. More frequent or longer droughts than those that occurred during the twentieth century, combined with continued warming associated with climate change, may lead to substantial future water deficits in the CRB.
KW - Climate variability
KW - Hydrology
KW - Water budget/balance
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U2 - 10.1175/EI-D-20-0001.1
DO - 10.1175/EI-D-20-0001.1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85086843780
SN - 1087-3562
VL - 24
SP - 1
EP - 20
JO - Earth Interactions
JF - Earth Interactions
IS - 2
ER -