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Title: Floods due to Atmospheric Rivers along the U.S. West Coast: The Role of Antecedent Soil Moisture in a Warming Climate

Journal Article · · Journal of Hydrometeorology
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [1]
  1. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  2. Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States). Scripps Inst. of Oceanography, Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E)
  3. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
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Precipitation extremes are projected to become more frequent along the U.S. West Coast due to increased atmospheric river (AR) activity, but the frequency of less intense precipitation events may decrease. Antecedent soil moisture (ASM) conditions can have a large impact on flood responses, especially if prestorm precipitation decreases. Taken together with increased antecedent evaporative demand due to warming, this would result in reduced soil moisture at the onset of extreme precipitation events. In this work, we examine the impact of ASM on AR-related floods in a warming climate in three basins that form a transect along the U.S. Pacific Coast: the Chehalis River basin in Washington, the Russian River basin in Northern California, and the Santa Margarita River basin in Southern California. Additionally, we ran the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) over the three river basins using forcings downscaled from 10 global climate models (GCMs). We examined the dynamic role of ASM by comparing the changes in the largest 50, 100, and 150 extreme events in two periods, 1951–2000 and 2050–99. In the Chehalis basin, the projected fraction of AR-related extreme discharge events slightly decreases. In the Russian basin, this fraction increases, however, and more substantially so in the Santa Margarita basin. This is due to increases in AR-related extreme precipitation events, as well as the fact that the relationship of extreme precipitation to extreme discharge is strengthened by projected increases in year-to-year volatility of annual precipitation in California, which increases the likelihood of concurrent occurrence of large storms and wet ASM conditions.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830; 4600013361
OSTI ID:
1650133
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-148371
Journal Information:
Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 21, Issue 8; ISSN 1525-755X
Publisher:
American Meteorological SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Extreme events
flood events
soil moisture
hydrologic models