scholarly journals Causality of the Drought in the Southwestern United States Based on Observations

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (13) ◽  
pp. 4891-4896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Zhang ◽  
Yadong Lei ◽  
Qiu-Run Yu ◽  
Klaus Fraedrich ◽  
Hironobu Iwabuchi

Slow feature analysis is used to extract driving forces from the monthly mean anomaly time series of the precipitation in the southwestern United States (1895–2015). Four major spectral scales pass the 95% confidence test after wavelet analysis of the derived driving forces. Further harmonic analysis indicates that only two fundamental frequencies are dominant in the spectral domain. The frequencies represent the influence of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) and solar activity on the precipitation from the southwestern United States. In addition, solar activity has exerted a greater effect than the PDO on the precipitation in the southwestern United States over the past 120 years. By comparing the trend of droughts with the two fundamental frequencies, it is found that both the droughts in the 1900s and in the twenty-first century were affected by the PDO and solar activity, whereas the droughts from the 1950s to the 1970s were mainly affected by solar activity.

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 3846-3856 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hye-Mi Kim ◽  
Michael A. Alexander

Abstract The vertically integrated water vapor transport (IVT) over the Pacific–North American sector during three phases of ENSO in boreal winter (December–February) is investigated using IVT values calculated from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) during 1979–2010. The shift of the location and sign of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean leads to different atmospheric responses and thereby changes the seasonal mean moisture transport into North America. During eastern Pacific El Niño (EPEN) events, large positive IVT anomalies extend northeastward from the subtropical Pacific into the northwestern United States following the anomalous cyclonic flow around a deeper Aleutian low, while a southward shift of the cyclonic circulation during central Pacific El Niño (CPEN) events induces the transport of moisture into the southwestern United States. In addition, moisture from the eastern tropical Pacific is transported from the deep tropical eastern Pacific into Mexico and the southwestern United States during CPEN. During La Niña (NINA), the seasonal mean IVT anomaly is opposite to that of two El Niño phases. Analyses of 6-hourly IVT anomalies indicate that there is strong moisture transport from the North Pacific into the northwestern and southwestern United States during EPEN and CPEN, respectively. The IVT is maximized on the southeastern side of a low located over the eastern North Pacific, where the low is weaker but located farther south and closer to shore during CPEN than during EPEN. Moisture enters the southwestern United States from the eastern tropical Pacific during NINA via anticyclonic circulation associated with a ridge over the southern United States.


2013 ◽  
Vol 141 (12) ◽  
pp. 4322-4336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly M. Wood ◽  
Elizabeth A. Ritchie

Abstract A dataset of 167 eastern North Pacific tropical cyclones (TCs) is investigated for potential impacts in the southwestern United States over the period 1989–2009 and evaluated in the context of a 30-yr climatology. The statistically significant patterns from empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis demonstrate the prevalence of a midlatitude trough pattern when TC-related rainfall occurs in the southwestern United States. Conversely, the presence of a strong subtropical ridge tends to prevent such events from occurring and limits TC-related rainfall to Mexico. These statistically significant patterns correspond well with previous work. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation phenomenon is shown to have some effect on eastern North Pacific TC impacts on the southwestern United States, as shifts in the general circulation can subsequently influence which regions receive rainfall from TCs or their remnants. The Pacific decadal oscillation may have a greater influence during the period of study as evidenced by EOF analysis of sea surface temperature anomalies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Wang ◽  
X. Chen

Abstract. Almost all climate time series have some degree of nonstationarity due to external driving forces perturbing the observed system. Therefore, these external driving forces should be taken into account when constructing the climate dynamics. This paper presents a new technique of obtaining the driving forces of a time series from the slow feature analysis (SFA) approach, and then introduces them into a predictive model to predict nonstationary time series. The basic theory of the technique is to consider the driving forces as state variables and to incorporate them into the predictive model. Experiments using a modified logistic time series and winter ozone data in Arosa, Switzerland, were conducted to test the model. The results showed improved prediction skills.


1992 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 445-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. E. Northam ◽  
R. H. Callihan

Two introduced windgrass species have become crop weeds in North America. Common windgrass is a major weed of winter cereals in Europe and was first documented in North America in the early 1800s. It is a weed of roadsides and waste areas in the northeastern United States and in winter grain fields of southern Ontario and Michigan. Interrupted windgrass was first reported in North America approximately 90 yr ago; it is adapted to more arid sites than common windgrass and is distributed predominantly in the northwestern U.S.A. During the past 10 to 15 yr, interrupted windgrass has adversely affected winter grain and grass seed producers in the Pacific Northwest due to additional control costs.


2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (127) ◽  
pp. 377-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Daly

In the proclamation that was issued on Easter Monday 1916 the provisional government of the Irish Republic undertook to grant ‘equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens’ and to ‘cherish all the children of the nation equally’. It also emphasised that the Republic was ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from a majority in the past’ and referred to the support given to the Republic ‘by her exiled children in America’. The belief that the Irish nation included all inhabitants of the island was a central tenet of Irish nationalism both before and after 1922, and the numerous visits that nationalist leaders have paid to the United States from the time of Parnell and Davitt to the present testify to the importance that has been attached to the Irish overseas. In November 1948, while introducing the second reading of the Republic of Ireland Bill, the Taoiseach, John A. Costello, noted that ‘The Irish at home are only one section of a great race which has spread itself throughout the world, particularly in the great countries of North America and the Pacific.’


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Sharon E. Mace, MD, FACEP, FAAP ◽  
Aishwarya Sharma, BS

Hospitals, which care for some of the most vulnerable individuals, have been impacted by disasters in the past and are likely to be affected by future disasters. Yet data on hospital evacuations are infrequent and outdated, at best. This goal of this study was to determine the characteristics and frequency of disasters in the United States that have resulted in hospital evacuations by an appraisal of the literature from 2000 to 2017. There were 158 hospital evacuations in the United States over 18 years. The states with the highest number of evacuations were Florida (N = 39), California (N = 30), and. Texas (N = 15). The reason for the evacuation was “natural” in 114 (72.2 percent), made-man “intentional” 14 (8.9 percent), and man-made “unintentional” or technological related to internal hospital infrastructure 30 (19 percent).The most common natural threats were hurricanes (N = 65) (57 percent), wildfires (N = 21) (18.4 percent), floods (N = 10) (8.8 percent), and storms (N = 8) (7 percent). Bombs/ bomb threats were the most common reason (N = 8) (57.1 percent) for a hospital evacuation resulting from a manmade intentional disaster, followed by armed gunman (N = 4) (28.6 percent). The most frequent infrastructure problems included hospital fires/smoke (N = 9) (30 percent), and chemical fumes (N = 7) (23.3 percent). Of those that reported the duration and number of evacuees, 30 percent of evacuations lasted over 24 h and the number of evacuees was 100 in over half (55.2 percent) the evacuations. This information regarding hospital evacuations should allow hospital administrators, disaster planners, and others to better prepare for disasters that result in the need for hospital evacuation.


Author(s):  
Deepak Nayyar

This chapter analyses the striking changes in the geographical distribution of manufacturing production amongst countries and across continents since 1750, a period that spans more than two-and-a-half centuries, which could be described as the movement of industrial hubs in the world economy over time. Until around 1820, world manufacturing production was concentrated in China and India. The Industrial Revolution, followed by the advent of colonialism, led to deindustrialization in Asia and, by 1880, Britain became the world industrial hub that extended to northwestern Europe. The United States surpassed Britain in 1900, and was the dominant industrial hub in the world until 2000. During 1950 to 2000, the relative, though not absolute, importance of Western Europe diminished, and Japan emerged as a significant industrial hub, while the other new industrial hub, the USSR and Eastern Europe, was short lived. The early twenty-first century, 2000–2017, witnessed a rapid decline of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan as industrial hubs, to be replaced largely by Asia, particularly China. This process of shifting hubs, associated with industrialization in some countries and deindustrialization in other countries in the past, might be associated with premature deindustrialization in yet other countries in the future.


Author(s):  
Clint Randles

The proliferation of the use of new media and creativities are expanding the ways that humans engage creatively with music in the twenty-first century. As teachers and researchers, our methods of assessing these creativities need to expand as well. In this chapter the author points to some of the ways that music education has traditionally conceived of both creativity and the measurement of compositional activity in the classroom. However, it should be clear that formative, summative, feedback, diagnostic, and evaluative assessment are all necessary and vital to understanding and justifying the place of composition learning in music education, and that we as a profession have not done an adequate job of it in the past. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, Finland, and Australia, have done a better job of creating curricular space for composition than the United States. The rest of the world can learn from these successes.


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