Internal ocean-atmosphere variability drives megadroughts in Western North America

Geophysical Research Letters
S CoatsK J Anchukaitis

Abstract

Multidecadal droughts that occurred during the Medieval Climate Anomaly represent an important target for validating the ability of climate models to adequately characterize drought risk over the near-term future. A prominent hypothesis is that these megadroughts were driven by a centuries-long radiatively forced shift in the mean state of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Here we use a novel combination of spatiotemporal tree-ring reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate to infer the atmosphere-ocean dynamics that coincide with megadroughts over the American West, and find that these features are consistently associated with ten-to-thirty year periods of frequent cold El Niño Southern Oscillation conditions and not a centuries-long shift in the mean of the tropical Pacific Ocean. These results suggest an important role for internal variability in driving past megadroughts. State-of-the art climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5, however, do not simulate a consistent association between megadroughts and internal variability of the tropical Pacific Ocean, with implications for our confidence in megadrought risk projections.

References

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Mar 16, 2004·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Gregory J McCabeJulio L Betancourt
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Citations

Jan 1, 2017·Hydrology and Earth System Sciences·Randal D KosterXing Yuan
Jul 30, 2019·Science Advances·Nathan J SteigerEdward R Cook
Mar 20, 2019·Scientific Reports·Adam M HudsonMarie G De Los Santos

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