Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Using the GoAmazon-CHUVA measurements to understand what causes the biases in the onset of the rainy season in Amazonia in climate models

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1556997· OSTI ID:1556997
 [1]
  1. University of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States); University of Texas at Austin, TX (United States); Jackson School of Geosciences, Austin, TX (United States); University of California, Los Angeles
The onset of the Amazon rainy season has a large temporal and spatial variability, and strong impact on aerosols, ecosystems, fire, carbon fluxes, dry season length, agriculture, and hydropower. Two major droughts occurred in the region in the last 20 years, and the dry season has increased in length by about one month. These events highlight the urgency for improving our understanding and capability to project the rainy season onset and drought variability. However, global climate models (CMIP3 and CMIP5) appear to underestimate the past variability, and also project virtually no future change of the onset of rainy season over the Amazon even when they are forced by strong greenhouse forcing under the RCP8.5 scenario. Why these models underestimate the variability of the rainy season onset, and whether this bias implies an underestimate of sensitivity of their dry season length to anthropogenic radiative forcing remain unclear.
Research Organization:
Jackson School of Geosciences, Austin, TX (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Contributing Organization:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory; California Institute of Technology
DOE Contract Number:
SC0011117
OSTI ID:
1556997
Report Number(s):
DOE-UTAustin--SC0011117; 4046801607
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (4)

What controls the interannual variation of the wet season onsets over the Amazon?: Yin et al: Amazonian Wet Season Onset journal March 2014
How Do Environmental Conditions Influence Vertical Buoyancy Structure and Shallow-to-Deep Convection Transition across Different Climate Regimes? journal June 2018
Rainforest-initiated wet season onset over the southern Amazon journal July 2017
Sensitivity of Amazon Regional Climate to Deforestation journal January 2017

Similar Records

Dry-Season Greening and Water Stress in Amazonia: The Role of Modeling Leaf Phenology
Journal Article · Mon May 28 20:00:00 EDT 2018 · Journal of Geophysical Research. Biogeosciences · OSTI ID:1539733