HR: 1330h
AN: H22B-0913    [PDF]
TI: A 85-year Retrospective Hydrologic Analysis for the Western U.S.
AU: * Voisin, N
EM: nathalie@hydro.washington.edu
AF: Hydrology Group - University of Washington, Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept. Wilson Ceramic Laboratory, Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195-2700 United States
AU: Park, H
EM: park@hydro.washington.edu
AF: Hydrology Group - University of Washington, Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept. Wilson Ceramic Laboratory, Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195-2700 United States
AU: Hamlet, A F
EM: hamleaf@hydro.washington.edu
AF: Hydrology Group - University of Washington, Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept. Wilson Ceramic Laboratory, Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195-2700 United States
AU: Wood, A W
EM: aww@hydro.washington.edu
AF: Hydrology Group - University of Washington, Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept. Wilson Ceramic Laboratory, Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195-2700 United States
AU: Guttman, N
EM: nguttman@ncdc.noaa.gov
AF: National Climatic Data Center, 151 Patton Ave., Asheville, NC 28801 United States
AU: Lettenmaier, D P
EM: dennisl@u.washington.edu
AF: Hydrology Group - University of Washington, Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept. Wilson Ceramic Laboratory, Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195-2700 United States
AB: The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has recently created digital archives of daily climatological data (primarily precipitation and daily temperature maxima and minima) for the continental U.S. going back to the beginning of the instrumental records. Previous electronic archives were typically available only back to about 1948, with a few stations digitized back to the 1930's. We have used these data to extend our previous 50-year retrospective analysis back to 1916 and forward to 2002, a period for which adequate station density exists to perform hydrologic simulations with the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model. A particular advantage of this 85-year period is that it includes the drought of the 1930s, which allows comparative evaluation of the severity of more recent events. Several important technical issues are addressed, including development of a method, based on the carefully quality controlled HCN (Historical Climatology Network) stations to control for drift in the gridded data that otherwise results from changes in the stations included over time. The resulting long gridded climate records, and associated hydrologic simulations (e.g., of soil moisture, snow water storage, and runoff) derived from them make possible a better understanding of hydrologic variability in the 20th century. We perform exploratory evaluations of the new data set over the Columbia River basin to evaluate the severity of the 2001 hydrologic drought, and over the interior of the western U.S. to evaluate the severity of the ongoing three-year agricultural drought.
DE: 1812 Drought
DE: 1833 Hydroclimatology
DE: 1860 Runoff and streamflow
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting