HR: 09:30h
AN: U51A-05    [PDF]
TI: Assessing Urbanization Impact on Long-term Rainfall Trends in Houston
AU: * Hooshialsadat, P
EM: phooshi@uark.edu
AF: University of Arkansas, 4190 Bell Engineering Center, Fayetteville, AR 72701 United States
AU: Burian, S J
EM: burian@eng.utah.edu
AF: University of Utah, 122 South Central Campus Drive, Suite 104, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 United States
AU: Shepherd, J M
EM: shepherd@agnes.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 912.0, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: Rainfall data from 50 rain gauges within and nearby Houston were analyzed to identify annual and warm season (June, July and August) rainfall trends from 1950 to 2000. Comparison of the mean annual and warm season rainfall amounts in the urban area to those in an upwind control region and a downwind urban impacted region indicates that the urban area has experienced higher average annual and warm season rainfall amounts during the 50-year time period than the upwind control region. The urban-impacted region has also experienced higher rainfall amounts, while the urban area and urban-impacted region do not have a statistically significant difference in rainfall amounts. Trend analyses were also performed on the 50-yr time series of annual and warm season rainfall amounts by calculating a statistic representing the differences in annual and warm season rainfall amount for each year between the urban area and upwind control region, the urban impacted region and the upwind control region, and the urban area and urban impacted region. The trend of the difference statistic versus time and population was assessed using straight-line plots and regression analyses. The regression results suggested that there is an increasing trend for the urban area-upwind control region difference with both time and population growth, but no significant trend for the urban-impacted region-upwind control region and urban area-urban-impacted region difference statistics.
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
DE: 1854 Precipitation (3354)
SC: U
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting