Pacific Decadal Oscillation

River ecosystems are naturally variable in time and space and this variability is largely determined by climate, geology, and topography. We explore how variability in cli- mate influences rivers. Our specific goals are to discuss (1) the major natural drivers of global- scale climate; (2) variability in temperature, precipitation, and streamflow patterns and how they relate to natural climate oscillations, such as ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation, PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation), and AO/NAO (Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation); (3) how human activities influence climate variability; (4) how climate variability influences river systems; and (5) the need to account for climate variability in river restoration activities. Three regional-scale river drainages are explored in detail: the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest; the Colorado River in the Rocky Mountains and the Southwestern USA; and the Kissimmee-Okeechobee-Everglades drainage in South Florida. As is true ...

In austral summer, the observed El Niño (EN) events during warm Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) phases (PDO(+)) exhibited large anomalous upper level wave patterns in response to larger Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies in the Equatorial Pacific and Atlantic Oceans compared with SST anomalies in EN events during cold PDO phases (PDO(−)). The precipitation anomalies in PDO(+) EN are increased over Southeastern South America (SESA) associated with the intensification of the moisture flux convergence in this region. The PDO(−) EN events exhibit positive precipitation anomalies only over southern SESA, while negative anomalies were observed in the north. Downward motion and anomalous divergence over central eastern Brazil may have contributed to the weakening of the northwesterly moisture flux convergence associated with the South American Low Level Jet (SALLJ) over the subtropics. The extratropical cyclones showed higher frequency and lower central pressures in southern Brazil, Uruguay, northeastern Argentina, and Southwest Atlantic Ocean during the PDO(+) EN events compared with the PDO(−) EN events. Such increase in the frequency and intensity of cyclogenesis cases seems to be in accordance with the anomalous moisture flux convergence over the SESA and associated reduction in the Sea Level Pressure observed during PDO(+) EN events. In order to investigate the impact of a canonical El Niño event over South America under different PDO phases, two numerical experiments were done with an Atmospheric General Circulation Model. Global SST and ice sea fields average over years characterized by (a) PDO(+) and (b) PDO(−) were considered as climatologically fields, and a composite of anomalies of SST of all El Niño events observed in 1950–1999 was added in the region 20ºS–20ºN;120ºW–175ºW of both “climatologies.” The differences in experiments suggest that a canonical EN may produce significant different anomalous atmospheric patterns associated with distinct PDO climatologies. The more significant differences are simulated over extreme northern and eastern Brazil. Additional numerical experiments isolating the observed variability of SST over several oceanic basins during different PDO phases will be conducted to study their particular role on the South American climate.

We applied dendrochronology techniques to develop a 103-year growth increment chronology using geoduck clams (Panopea abrupta) collected from the Tree Nob region of northern British Columbia, Canada. Using acetate peels of the chondrophore region of fifteen geoduck clams, growth increments were photographed under a dissecting microscope and imported into image analysis software. All samples were visually crossdated and growth increment widths measured. A crossdating check in COFECHA calculated an interseries correlation of 0.716 and mean sensitivity of 0.29. We then used negative exponential functions to detrend all measurement time series before averaging them into a final master chronology that spanned 1901-2003. The resulting geoduck chronology showed strong interannual and interdecadal variability and closely tracked the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, including the regime shifts of 1945 and 1976. Geoduck growth is most strongly limited by cold winters, as indicated by strongly pos...

ABSTRACT Forest fires play a key role in the global carbon cycle and thus, can affect regional and global climate. Although fires in extended areas of Russian boreal forests have a considerable influence on atmospheric greenhouse gas and soot concentrations, estimates of their impact on climate are hampered by a lack of data on the history of forest fires. Especially regions with strong continental climate are of high importance due to an intensified development of wildfires. In this study we reconstruct the fire history of Southern Siberia during the past 750 years using ice-core based nitrate, potassium, and charcoal concentration records from Belukha glacier in the continental Siberian Altai. A period of exceptionally high forest-fire activity was observed between AD 1600 and 1680, following an extremely dry period AD 1540–1600. Ice-core pollen data suggest distinct forest diebacks and the expansion of steppe in response to dry climatic conditions. Coherence with a paleoenvironmental record from the 200 km distant Siberian lake Teletskoye shows that the vegetational shift AD 1540–1680, the increase in fire activity AD 1600–1680, and the subsequent recovery of forests AD 1700 were of regional significance. Dead biomass accumulation in response to drought and high temperatures around AD 1600 probably triggered maximum forest-fire activity AD 1600–1680. The extreme dry period in the 16th century was also observed at other sites in Central Asia and is possibly associated with a persistent positive mode of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). No significant increase in biomass burning occurred in the Altai region during the last 300 years, despite strongly increasing temperatures and human activities. Our results imply that precipitation changes controlled fire-regime and vegetation shifts in the Altai region during the past 750 years. We conclude that high sensitivity of ecosystems to occasional decadal-scale drought events may trigger unprecedented environmental reorganizations under global-warming conditions.

Abstract: Two of the most prominent known sources of interannual and interdecadal climate variability in the form of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) are analyzed to assess the influences of these large-scale climate phenomena on water ...

The stochastic analysis, modeling, and simulation of climatic and hydrologic processes such as precipitation, streamflow, and sea surface temperature have usually been based on assumed stationarity or randomness of the process under consideration. However, empirical evidence of many hydroclimatic data shows temporal variability involving trends, oscillatory behavior, and sudden shifts. While many studies have been made for detecting and testing the statistical significance of these special characteristics, the probabilistic framework for modeling the temporal dynamics of such processes appears to be lacking. In this paper a family of stochastic models that can be used to capture the dynamics of abrupt shifts in hydroclimatic time series is proposed. The applicability of such ‘‘shifting mean models’ ’ are illustrated by using time series data of annual Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) indices and annual streamflows of the Niger River. 1.

Common patterns of climatic variability across the Western Americas are modulated by tropical and extra-tropical oscillatory modes operating at different temporal scales. Interannual climatic variations in the tropics and subtropics of the Western Americas are largely regulated by El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), whereas decadal-scale variations are induced by long-term Pacific modes of climate variability such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). At higher latitudes, climate variations are dominated by oscillations in the Annular Modes (the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations) which show both interannual and longer-scale temporal oscillations. Here we use a recently-developed network of tree-ring chronologies to document past climatic variations along the length of the Western Cordilleras. The local and regional characterization of the relationships between climate and tree-growth provide the basis to compare climatic variations in temperature- and precipitation-sensitive records in the Western Americas over the past 3–4 centuries. Upper-elevation records from tree-ring sites in the Gulf of Alaska and Patagonia reveal the occurrence of concurrent decade-scale oscillations in temperature during the last 400 years modulated by PDO. The most recent fluctuation from the cold- to the warm-phase of the PDO in the mid 1970s induced marked changes in tree growth in most extratropical temperature-sensitive chronologies in the Western Cordilleras of both Hemispheres. Common patterns of interannual variations in tree-ring chronologies from the relatively-dry subtropics in western North and South America are largely modulated by ENSO. We used an independent reconstruction of Niño-3 sea surface temperature (SST) to document relationships to tree growth in the southwestern US, the Bolivian Altiplano and Central Chile and also to show strong correlations between these regions. These results further document the strong influence of SSTs in the tropical Pacific as a common forcing of precipitation variations in the subtropical Western America during the past 3–4 centuries. Common patterns of interdecadal or longer-scale variability in tree-ring chronologies from the subarctic and subantarctic regions also suggest common forcings for the annular modes of high-latitude climate variability. A clear separation of the relative influence of tropical versus high-latitude modes of variability is currently difficult to establish: discriminating between tropical and extra-tropical influences on tree growth still remains elusive, particularly in subtropical and temperate regions along our transect. We still need independent reconstructions of tropical and polar modes of climate variability to gain insight into past forcing interactions and the combined effect on climates of the Western Americas. Finally, we also include a series of brief examples (as ‘boxes’) illustrating some of the major regional developments in dendrochronology over this global transect in the last 10 years.

1. ABSTRACT Variability in three Pacific teleconnection patterns are examined to see if net carbon exchange at a low- elevation, old-growth forest is affected by climatic changes associated with these periodicities. Examined are the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Pacific/North American Oscillation (PNA) and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). We use six years of eddy covariance CO2, H2O and energy fluxes

The altitude of the 0°C isotherm obtained from radiosonde data of the aerological Chilean stations Antofagasta, Quintero/Santo Domingo, Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas are analyzed, along with surface temperature and precipitation records from nearby stations. The strong effect of the 1976/77 climate shift due to a change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is evident in the temperature and precipitation data. The data are used as input for an empirical model which reconstructs annually the equilibrium-line altitude (ELA) for the last 49 years on the western side of the southern Andes. The model takes air temperature, precipitation and altitude as the main parameters, and was first developed by Fox (1993) and applied by Condom and others (2007). From the radiosonde data, a significant positive trend of the 0°C isotherm has occurred in the northern, central and southern regions, indicating an ELA rise due to regional warming. General glacier retreat, ice thinning and negative mass balan...