Number of winter rainy days reconstructed from southwestern tree rings
- NOAA Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, CO (United States)
- Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)
The objective of this paper is to explore the usefulness of tree-ring data for quantifying the temporal variability of winter rainy-day frequency over the past three centuries in the southwestern United States. The climatological variable, number of rainy days, has not previously been used in dendroclimatic reconstructions. It is reasonable to expect that the number of rainy days might be more strongly related than total precipitation to seasonally aggregated moisture conditions sensed by trees, especially in areas where rainfall from infrequent, heavy storms may run off before much moisture is absorbed into the soil. This study uses a network of tree-ring chronologies with a common time period 1702-1983 to reconstruct number of winter rainy days for a sub-region within the Southwest. The variance in the rainy day record explained by the tree-ring chronologies exceeds the 60% variance commonly yielded from arid-site trees in western North America. Calibration and verification statistics are highly significant, and a comparison with an independent gauge record helps validate the reconstruction. Conceptually and by the objective criterion of percent variance explained, number of rainy days appears, for this region, to be superior to total winter precipitation as a climatic variable for tree-ring reconstruction. 17 refs., 4 figs.
- OSTI ID:
- 535508
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970207-; TRN: 97:005076-0040
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 77. annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, Long Beach, CA (United States), 2-7 Feb 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of Eighth symposium on global change studies; PB: 402 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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