Drought and Pluvial Dipole Events within the Great Plains of the United States

The purpose of this study was to quantify dipole events (a drought year followed by a pluvial year) for various spatial scales including the nine Oklahoma climate divisions and the author-defined regions of the U.S. SouthernGreat Plains (SGP), High Plains (HP), and NorthernGreat Plains (NGP). Analys...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of applied meteorology and climatology Vol. 54; no. 9; pp. 1886 - 1898
Main Authors Christian, Jordan, Christian, Katarina, Basara, Jeffrey B.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Boston American Meteorological Society 01.09.2015
Subjects
Climate
Climate change
Climatology
Control algorithms
Datasets
Dipoles
Division
Drought
Droughts
El Nino
Geographic regions
High plains
Hydrology
Land area
Meteorology
Plains
Precipitation
Rain
Regions
Standard deviation
Temporal logic
Great Plains
United States > US
Texas
Oklahoma
USA, Oklahoma
USA, Great Plains
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Summary:The purpose of this study was to quantify dipole events (a drought year followed by a pluvial year) for various spatial scales including the nine Oklahoma climate divisions and the author-defined regions of the U.S. SouthernGreat Plains (SGP), High Plains (HP), and NorthernGreat Plains (NGP). Analyses revealed that, on average, over twice as many standard deviation (STDEV) dipoles existed in the latter half of the dataset (1955–2013) relative to the first half (1896–1954), suggesting that dramatic increases in precipitation from one year to the next within the Oklahoma climate divisions are increasing with time. For the larger regions within the Great Plains of the United States, the percent chance of a significant pluvial year following a significant drought year was approximately 25% of the time for the SGP and NGP and approximately 16%of the time for the HP. The STDEV dipole analyses further revealed that the frequency of dipoles was consistent between the first and second half of the dataset for the NGP and HP but was increasing with time in the SGP. The temporal periods of anomalous precipitation during relative pluvial years within the STDEV dipole events were unique for each region whereby October occurred most frequently (70%) within the SGP, September occurred most frequently (60%) within the HP, and May occurred most frequently (62%) within the NGP.
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ISSN:1558-8424
1558-8432
DOI:10.1175/JAMC-D-15-0002.1