Identification

Title

Recent warming of landfalling atmospheric rivers along the west coast of the United States

Abstract

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) often generate extreme precipitation, with AR temperature strongly influencing hydrologic impacts by altering the timing and magnitude of runoff. Long‐term changes in AR temperatures, therefore, have important implications for regional hydroclimate—especially in locations where a shift to more rain‐dominated AR precipitation could affect flood risk and/or water storage in snowpack. In this study, we provide the first climatology of AR temperature across five U.S. West Coast subregions. We then assess trends in landfalling AR temperatures for each subregion from 1980 to 2016 using three reanalysis products. We find AR warming at seasonal and monthly scales. Cool‐season warming ranges from 0.69 to 1.65 °C over the study period. We detect monthly scale warming of >2 °C, with the most widespread warming occurring in November and March. To understand the causes of AR warming, we quantify the density of AR tracks from genesis to landfall and analyze along‐track AR temperature for each month and landfall region. We investigate three possible influences on AR temperature trends at landfall:along‐track temperatures prior to landfall, background temperatures over the landfall region, and AR temperature over the coastal ocean adjacent to the region of landfall. Generally, AR temperatures at landfall more closely match coastal and background temperature trends than along‐track AR temperature trends. The seasonal asymmetry of the AR warming and the heterogeneity of influences have important implications for regional water storage and flood risk—demonstrating that changes in AR characteristics are complex and may not be directly inferred from changes in the background climate.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7rr22bm

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-07-04T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact