GSA Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, USA - 2017

Paper No. 196-1
Presentation Time: 8:15 AM

THE FUTURE ‘WARM LIA’ SCENARIO ACROSS THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST


LOISEL, Julie1, MACDONALD, Glen M.2 and THOMSON, Marcus2, (1)Dept. of Geography, Texas A&M University, OM building, room 810, TAMU 3147, College Station, TX 77843, (2)Department of Geography, University of California at Los Angeles, 1255 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, juloisel@hotmail.com

The American Southwest has experienced a series of severe droughts interspersed with strong wet episodes over the past decades, prompting questions about future climate patterns and potential intensification of weather disruptions under warming conditions. Here we show that interannual hydroclimatic variability in this region has displayed a significant level of non-stationarity over the past millennium. Tree ring-based analysis of past drought indicates that the Little Ice Age (LIA) experienced high interannual hydroclimatic variability, similar to projections for the 21st century. This is contrary to the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), which had reduced variability and therefore may be misleading as an analog for 21st century warming, notwithstanding its warm (and arid) conditions.

Given past non-stationarity, a ‘warm LIA’ climate scenario for the coming century that combines high precipitation variability (similar to LIA conditions) with warm and dry conditions (similar to MCA conditions) represents a plausible situation that is supported by recent climate simulations. Our comparison of tree ring-based drought analysis and records from the tropical Pacific Ocean suggests that changing variability in El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) explains much of the contrasting variances between the MCA and LIA conditions across the American Southwest. Our proposed “warm LIA” scenario with high ENSO variability for the 21st century could be induced by a decrease in meridional sea surface temperature gradient caused by increased greenhouse gas concentration, as shown by several recent climate modeling experiments. Overall, these results coupled with the paleo-record suggests that the ‘warm LIA’ concept provides a useful scenario for development of future water-resource management and drought and flood hazard mitigation strategies in the Southwest.