scholarly journals An anomalous atmospheric river linked to the late June 2021 western North America heatwave

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruping Mo ◽  
Hai Lin ◽  
Frédéric Vitart
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Lower Troposphere ◽  
Heavy Precipitation ◽  
Cold Season ◽  
Feedback Mechanism ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Water Vapour Flux ◽  
The North

Abstract Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are long and narrow bands of enhanced water vapour flux concentrated in the lower troposphere. Many studies have documented the important role of cold-season ARs in producing heavy precipitation and triggering extreme flooding in many parts of the world. However, relatively little research has been conducted on the warm-season ARs and their impacts on extreme heatwave development. Here we show an anomalous warm-season AR moving across the North Pacific and its interaction with the western North American heatwave in late June 2021. We call it an “oriental express’’ to highlight its capability to transport tropical moisture to the west coast of North America from sources in Southeast Asia. Its landfall over the Alaska Panhandle lasted for more than two days and resulted in significant spillover of moisture into western Canada. We provide evidence that the injected water vapour was trapped under the heat dome and may have formed a positive feedback mechanism to regulate the heatwave development in western North America.

scholarly journals Spatial and Seasonal Variations in Aridification across Southwest North America

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (12) ◽  
pp. 4637-4649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon M. Jones ◽  
David S. Gutzler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Cold Season ◽  
Base Flow ◽  
First Century ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Southwest United States ◽  
The North ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract Southwestern North America (SWNA) is projected to become drier in the twenty-first century as both precipitation (P) and evaporation (E) rates change with increasing greenhouse gas concentration. The authors diagnose the relative contributions of changes in P and E to the local surface moisture balance (P − E) in cold and warm halves of the year across SWNA. Trends in P − E vary spatially between the arid southern subregion (mostly northern Mexico) and the more temperate northern subregion (southwest United States), although both subregions exhibit a negative trend in P − E (trending toward more arid conditions) in CMIP5 projections for the twenty-first century. The P − E trend is biggest in the cold season, when much of the base flow to rivers in the southwest United States is generated. The downward trend in cold season P − E across SWNA is caused primarily by increasing E in the north and decreasing P in the south. Decreasing P is the primary contributor to modest warm season drying trends in both northern and southern subregions. Also, P accounts for most of the interannual variability in SWNA P − E and is strongly correlated with modes of oceanic natural variability during the cold season. SWNA aridification is therefore most readily distinguished from the region’s large natural climate variability in the cold season in the northern subregion, where the projected temperature-driven increase in E is greater than the projected decrease in P.

scholarly journals Diet composition and feeding habits of the eyespot skate, Atlantoraja cyclophora (Elasmobranchii: Arhynchobatidae), off Uruguay and northern Argentina

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago A. Barbini ◽  
Luis O. Lucifora
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Diet Composition ◽  
Prey Size ◽  
Prey Availability ◽  
Feeding Habits ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Cold Season ◽  
The North ◽  
Multiple Hypothesis ◽  
Modelling Approach

ABSTRACT The eyespot skate, Atlantoraja cyclophora, is an endemic species from the southwestern Atlantic, occurring from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to northern Patagonia, Argentina. The feeding habits of this species, from off Uruguay and north Argentina, were evaluated using a multiple hypothesis modelling approach. In general, the diet was composed mainly of decapod crustaceans, followed by teleost fishes. Molluscs, mysidaceans, amphipods, isopods, lancelets and elasmobranchs were consumed in lower proportion. The consumption of shrimps drecreased with increasing body size of A. cyclophora. On the other hand, the consumption of teleosts increased with body size. Mature individuals preyed more heavily on crabs than immature individuals. Teleosts were consumed more in the south region (34º - 38ºS) and crabs in the north region (38º - 41ºS). Shrimps were eaten more in the warm season than in the cold season. Prey size increased with increasing body size of A. cyclophora , but large individuals also consumed small teleosts and crabs. Atlantoraja cyclophora has demersal-benthic feeding habits, shifts its diet with increasing body size and in response to seasonal and regional changes in prey availability and distribution.

scholarly journals Drought Relief and Reversal over North America from 1500 to 2016

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
M. C. A. Torbenson ◽  
D. W. Stahle ◽  
I. M. Howard ◽  
D. J. Burnette ◽  
D. Griffin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
North America ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Temporal Stability ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Cool Season ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
The North ◽  
Drought Relief

Abstract Season-to-season persistence of soil moisture drought varies across North America. Such interseasonal autocorrelation can have modest skill in forecasting future conditions several months in advance. Because robust instrumental observations of precipitation span less than 100 years, the temporal stability of the relationship between seasonal moisture anomalies is uncertain. The North American Seasonal Precipitation Atlas (NASPA) is a gridded network of separately reconstructed cool-season (December–April) and warm-season (May–July) precipitation series and offers new insights on the intra-annual changes in drought for up to 2000 years. Here, the NASPA precipitation reconstructions are rescaled to represent the long-term soil moisture balance during the cool season and 3-month-long atmospheric moisture during the warm season. These rescaled seasonal reconstructions are then used to quantify the frequency, magnitude, and spatial extent of cool-season drought that was relieved or reversed during the following summer months. The adjusted seasonal reconstructions reproduce the general patterns of large-scale drought amelioration and termination in the instrumental record during the twentieth century and are used to estimate relief and reversals for the most skillfully reconstructed past 500 years. Subcontinental-to-continental-scale reversals of cool-season drought in the following warm season have been rare, but the reconstructions display periods prior to the instrumental data of increased reversal probabilities for the mid-Atlantic region and the U.S. Southwest. Drought relief at the continental scale may arise in part from macroscale ocean–atmosphere processes, whereas the smaller-scale regional reversals may reflect land surface feedbacks and stochastic variability.

scholarly journals CHROMOSOME STUDIES IN WILD POPULATIONS OF DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER. II. RELATIONSHIP OF INVERSION FREQUENCIES TO LATITUDE, SEASON, WING-LOADING AND FLIGHT ACTIVITY

Genetics ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-223
Author(s):  
Harrison D Stalker
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Cold Season ◽  
South Texas ◽  
Temperature Adaptation ◽  
Wing Loading ◽  
Ambient Temperatures ◽  
The North ◽  
Wing Load ◽  
Relationship Of

ABSTRACT In the midwestern and eastern U.S. populations of Drosophila melanogaster, the Standard gene arrangements show higher frequencies in the north than in the south. In a Missouri population, and to a lesser extent in a south Texas population, the frequencies of Standard chromosomes regularly rise during the cold season and drop during the warm season, thus paralleling the north-south frequency differences. In the Missouri population in 1976 and 1978, wild males were tested far their ability to fly to bait at different ambient temperatures. In both years, males flying in nature in the temperature range of 13° to 15° showed significantly higher frequencies of Standard chromosomes than did those flying in the 16° to 28° range. Wild males flying at 13° to 15° also have different tharax/wing proportions and significantly lower wingloading indices than do those flying at 16° to 28°. Moreover, wild flies homozygous Standard in 2R and/or 3R have significantly lower wing-loading indices than flies carrying inversions in these arms. Thus, wild flies with high frequencies of Standard chromosommes are karyotypically northern, are selectively favored during the cold season, have a relatively low wing-load and are most capable of flying at critically low ambient temperatures.—In summary, in Missouri, presence or absence of the common cosmopolitan inversions is an important factor in low temperature adaptation, and at least part of the adaptive mechanism involves control of thorax/wing proportions and thus control of wing-loading.

scholarly journals Influence of ENSO on North American subseasonal surface air temperature variability

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-412
Author(s):  
Patrick Martineau ◽  
Hisashi Nakamura ◽  
Yu Kosaka
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
North American ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Tropical Pacific ◽  
La Niña ◽  
Western North America ◽  
The North ◽  
Subseasonal Variability ◽  
La Nina

Abstract. The wintertime influence of tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) variability on subseasonal variability is revisited by identifying the dominant mode of covariability between 10–60 d band-pass-filtered surface air temperature (SAT) variability over the North American continent and winter-mean SST over the tropical Pacific. We find that the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) explains a dominant fraction of the year-to-year changes in subseasonal SAT variability that are covarying with SST and thus likely more predictable. In agreement with previous studies, we find a tendency for La Niña conditions to enhance the subseasonal SAT variability over western North America. This modulation of subseasonal variability is achieved through interactions between subseasonal eddies and La Niña-related changes in the winter-mean circulation. Specifically, eastward-propagating quasi-stationary eddies over the North Pacific are more efficient in extracting energy from the mean flow through the baroclinic conversion during La Niña. Structural changes of these eddies are crucial to enhance the efficiency of the energy conversion via amplified downgradient heat fluxes that energize subseasonal eddy thermal anomalies. The enhanced likelihood of cold extremes over western North America is associated with both an increased subseasonal SAT variability and the cold winter-mean response to La Niña.

A New Gunnel, Pholis clemensi, from the Coast of Western North America

1964 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 933-939 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
New Species ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
North American Species ◽  
Western North America ◽  
The North ◽  
The Family ◽  
Juan De Fuca ◽  
A New Species

A new species, Pholis clemensi, referred to the family Pholidae, is named and described from 12 specimens taken in southern British Columbia waters and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Pholis clemensi is compared with other members of the genus, and a key is given to the North American species.

The Impact of Sea Surface Temperature Biases on North American Precipitation in a High-Resolution Climate Model

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 2427-2447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel C. Johnson ◽  
Lakshmi Krishnamurthy ◽  
Andrew T. Wittenberg ◽  
Baoqiang Xiang ◽  
Gabriel A. Vecchi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Surface Temperature ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North American ◽  
North Pacific ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
Tropical Atlantic ◽  
Western North America ◽  
The North

AbstractPositive precipitation biases over western North America have remained a pervasive problem in the current generation of coupled global climate models. These biases are substantially reduced, however, in a version of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Forecast-Oriented Low Ocean Resolution (FLOR) coupled climate model with systematic sea surface temperature (SST) biases artificially corrected through flux adjustment. This study examines how the SST biases in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans contribute to the North American precipitation biases. Experiments with the FLOR model in which SST biases are removed in the Atlantic and Pacific are carried out to determine the contribution of SST errors in each basin to precipitation statistics over North America. Tropical and North Pacific SST biases have a strong impact on northern North American precipitation, while tropical Atlantic SST biases have a dominant impact on precipitation biases in southern North America, including the western United States. Most notably, negative SST biases in the tropical Atlantic in boreal winter induce an anomalously strong Aleutian low and a southward bias in the North Pacific storm track. In boreal summer, the negative SST biases induce a strengthened North Atlantic subtropical high and Great Plains low-level jet. Each of these impacts contributes to positive annual mean precipitation biases over western North America. Both North Pacific and North Atlantic SST biases induce SST biases in remote basins through dynamical pathways, so a complete attribution of the effects of SST biases on precipitation must account for both the local and remote impacts.

scholarly journals Climate Change Amplification of Natural Drought Variability: The Historic Mid-Twentieth-Century North American Drought in a Warmer World

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (17) ◽  
pp. 5417-5436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin I. Cook ◽  
Richard Seager ◽  
A. Park Williams ◽  
Michael J. Puma ◽  
Sonali McDermid ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Internal Variability ◽  
Cold Season ◽  
Severe Drought ◽  
Evaporative Demand ◽  
Southern Plains

AbstractIn the mid-twentieth century (1948–57), North America experienced a severe drought forced by cold tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs). If these SSTs recurred, it would likely cause another drought, but in a world substantially warmer than the one in which the original event took place. We use a 20-member ensemble of the GISS climate model to investigate the drought impacts of a repetition of the mid-twentieth-century SST anomalies in a significantly warmer world. Using observed SSTs and mid-twentieth-century forcings (Hist-DRGHT), the ensemble reproduces the observed precipitation deficits during the cold season (October–March) across the Southwest, southern plains, and Mexico and during the warm season (April–September) in the southern plains and the Southeast. Under analogous SST forcing and enhanced warming (Fut-DRGHT, ≈3 K above preindustrial), cold season precipitation deficits are ameliorated in the Southwest and southern plains and intensified in the Southeast, whereas during the warm season precipitation deficits are enhanced across North America. This occurs primarily from greenhouse gas–forced trends in mean precipitation, rather than changes in SST teleconnections. Cold season runoff deficits in Fut-DRGHT are significantly amplified over the Southeast, but otherwise similar to Hist-DRGHT over the Southwest and southern plains. In the warm season, however, runoff and soil moisture deficits during Fut-DRGHT are significantly amplified across the southern United States, a consequence of enhanced precipitation deficits and increased evaporative losses due to warming. Our study highlights how internal variability and greenhouse gas–forced trends in hydroclimate are likely to interact over North America, including how changes in both precipitation and evaporative demand will affect future drought.

Early Eocene (Ypresian) birds from the Okanagan Highlands, British Columbia (Canada) and Washington State (USA)

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (8) ◽  
pp. 803-813
Author(s):  
Gerald Mayr ◽  
S. Bruce Archibald ◽  
Gary W. Kaiser ◽  
Rolf W. Mathewes
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
North America ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Washington State ◽  
Fossil Birds ◽  
Early Eocene ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Postcranial Skeleton ◽  
The North ◽  
Okanagan Highlands

We survey the known avian fossils from Ypresian (early Eocene) fossil sites of the North American Okanagan Highlands, mainly in British Columbia (Canada). All specimens represent taxa that were previously unknown from the Eocene of far-western North America. Wings from the McAbee site are tentatively referred to the Gaviiformes and would constitute the earliest fossil record of this group of birds. A postcranial skeleton from Driftwood Canyon is tentatively assigned to the Songziidae, a taxon originally established for fossils from the Ypresian of China. Two skeletons from Driftwood Canyon and the McAbee site are tentatively referred to Coliiformes and Zygodactylidae, respectively, whereas three further fossils from McAbee, Blakeburn, and Republic (Washington, USA) are too poorly preserved for even a tentative assignment. The specimens from the Okanagan Highlands inhabited relatively high paleoaltitudes with microthermal climates (except Quilchena: lower mesothermal) and mild winters, whereas most other Ypresian fossil birds are from much warmer lowland paleoenvironments with upper mesothermal to megathermal climates. The putative occurrence of a gaviiform bird is particularly noteworthy because diving birds are unknown from other lacustrine Ypresian fossil sites of the Northern Hemisphere. The bones of the putative zygodactylid show a sulphurous colouration, and we hypothesize that this highly unusual preservation may be due to the metabolic activity of sulphide-oxidizing bacteria.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document