HR: 1330h
AN: H22B-0914    [PDF]
TI: Effects of Global Warming on Drought Frequency and Duration in the Northeast United States
AU: * Gao, C
EM: cgao@envsci.rutgers.edu
AF: Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551
AU: Robock, A
EM: robock@envsci.rutgers.edu
AF: Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551
AB: Over the past century, the northeast United States experienced several major droughts, with great economic damage as a consequence. Drought indices, such as the widely used Palmer Drought Severity Index, have been use to detect and monitor droughts with limited success. Here we use a relatively new index, the Standardized Precipitation Index, to study the change of drought conditions in the northeast United States, using observations and simulations from eight state-of-the-art general circulation models for the period 1901 to 2050. We separated the droughts into two different time scales, 3 months and 12 months, and three different severities, moderate, severe, and extreme. We found that, while the models behave quite differently from each other, the ensemble averages of the model simulations showed decreases in the frequencies of droughts in the future. The models project the frequencies of 3-month moderate, severe, and extreme droughts to decrease by about 12%, 4% and 6%, respectively, in the future compared with the 20th century; and those of 12-month duration to decrease by 16%, 7% and 8%. The only significant changes projected to occur in the duration of droughts is a decrease in extreme events.
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (3309)
DE: 1812 Drought
DE: 1854 Precipitation (3354)
DE: 3322 Land/atmosphere interactions
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting