Detectability of historical trends in station‐based precipitation characteristics over the continental United States
Abstract
Abstract The goal of this paper is to detect secular trends in observed, station‐based precipitation variations and extreme event occurrences over the United States. By definition, detectable trends are those that are unlikely to have arisen from internal variability alone. To represent this internal variability, we use station‐specific, seasonally varying, daily time scale stationary stochastic weather models—models in which the simulated interannual‐to‐multidecadal precipitation variance is purely the result of the random evolution of daily precipitation events within a given time period—to first estimate the trends in various means and extremes that can occur even with fixed, climatological daily precipitation characteristics. Detection of secular trends in the observed climate—whether naturally or anthropogenically induced—can then be defined relative to this stochastic variability, i.e., as trends in the means and/or extremes that are likely to have occurred only through a change in the underlying precipitation characteristics. The derived results have two important ramifications. First, they identify “hot spot” regions in which trends in precipitation characteristics are already emerging from within the envelope of stochastic variability, including (but not limited to) positive trends in annual occurrence across most of the U.S. and positive trends in annual intensity and heavy‐event accumulations across the Interior Plainsmore »
- Authors:
-
- Department of Earth and Environment Boston University Boston Massachusetts USA, The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer‐Range Future Boston University Boston Massachusetts USA
- Department of Earth and Environment Boston University Boston Massachusetts USA
- Publication Date:
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1402301
- Grant/Contract Number:
- DE‐SC0006914
- Resource Type:
- Publisher's Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres Journal Volume: 120 Journal Issue: 10; Journal ID: ISSN 2169-897X
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Citation Formats
Anderson, Bruce T., Gianotti, Daniel J., and Salvucci, Guido D. Detectability of historical trends in station‐based precipitation characteristics over the continental United States. United States: N. p., 2015.
Web. doi:10.1002/2014JD022960.
Anderson, Bruce T., Gianotti, Daniel J., & Salvucci, Guido D. Detectability of historical trends in station‐based precipitation characteristics over the continental United States. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JD022960
Anderson, Bruce T., Gianotti, Daniel J., and Salvucci, Guido D. Fri .
"Detectability of historical trends in station‐based precipitation characteristics over the continental United States". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JD022960.
@article{osti_1402301,
title = {Detectability of historical trends in station‐based precipitation characteristics over the continental United States},
author = {Anderson, Bruce T. and Gianotti, Daniel J. and Salvucci, Guido D.},
abstractNote = {Abstract The goal of this paper is to detect secular trends in observed, station‐based precipitation variations and extreme event occurrences over the United States. By definition, detectable trends are those that are unlikely to have arisen from internal variability alone. To represent this internal variability, we use station‐specific, seasonally varying, daily time scale stationary stochastic weather models—models in which the simulated interannual‐to‐multidecadal precipitation variance is purely the result of the random evolution of daily precipitation events within a given time period—to first estimate the trends in various means and extremes that can occur even with fixed, climatological daily precipitation characteristics. Detection of secular trends in the observed climate—whether naturally or anthropogenically induced—can then be defined relative to this stochastic variability, i.e., as trends in the means and/or extremes that are likely to have occurred only through a change in the underlying precipitation characteristics. The derived results have two important ramifications. First, they identify “hot spot” regions in which trends in precipitation characteristics are already emerging from within the envelope of stochastic variability, including (but not limited to) positive trends in annual occurrence across most of the U.S. and positive trends in annual intensity and heavy‐event accumulations across the Interior Plains and around the Great Lakes. Further, they identify “sentinel” metrics which show the greatest detectability—e.g., annual precipitation occurrence and intensity—as well as those which show the least detectability and hence are unlikely to produce any statistically meaningful signals—e.g., seasonal total precipitation and extremes.},
doi = {10.1002/2014JD022960},
journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres},
number = 10,
volume = 120,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri May 29 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Fri May 29 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JD022960
https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JD022960
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 15 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Attribution studies of observed land precipitation changes with nine coupled models: ATTRIBUTION OF CHANGES IN PRECIPITATION
journal, September 2005
- Lambert, F. Hugo; Gillett, Nathan P.; Stone, Dáithí A.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 32, Issue 18
Examination of the Bouchet–Morton Complementary Relationship Using a Mesoscale Climate Model and Observations under a Progressive Irrigation Scenario
journal, April 2006
- Ozdogan, Mutlu; Salvucci, Guido D.; Anderson, Bruce T.
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 7, Issue 2
Detectability of Anthropogenic Changes in Annual Temperature and Precipitation Extremes
journal, October 2004
- Hegerl, Gabriele C.; Zwiers, Francis W.; Stott, Peter A.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 17, Issue 19
Production of Temporally Consistent Gridded Precipitation and Temperature Fields for the Continental United States
journal, June 2005
- Hamlet, Alan F.; Lettenmaier, Dennis P.
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 6, Issue 3
Climatic changes in western North America, 1950-2005
journal, December 2011
- Booth, Evan L. J.; Byrne, James M.; Johnson, Dan L.
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 32, Issue 15
Observed Trends in Summertime Precipitation over the Southwestern United States
journal, April 2010
- Anderson, Bruce T.; Wang, Jingyun; Salvucci, Guido
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 23, Issue 7
Precipitation as a Chain-Dependent Process
journal, July 1977
- Katz, Richard W.
- Journal of Applied Meteorology, Vol. 16, Issue 7
Prolonged Dry Episodes over the Conterminous United States: New Tendencies Emerging during the Last 40 Years
journal, May 2008
- Groisman, Pavel Ya; Knight, Richard W.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 21, Issue 9
Decadal variability in the frequency of fall precipitation over the United States
journal, January 2007
- Small, David; Islam, Shafiqul
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, Issue 2
Detection and attribution of climate change: a regional perspective: Detection and attribution of climate change
journal, March 2010
- Stott, Peter A.; Gillett, Nathan P.; Hegerl, Gabriele C.
- Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Vol. 1, Issue 2
Detecting changes in seasonal precipitation extremes using regional climate model projections: Implications for managing fluvial flood risk: DETECTING CHANGES IN SEASONAL PRECIPITATION
journal, March 2010
- Fowler, H. J.; Wilby, R. L.
- Water Resources Research, Vol. 46, Issue 3
Fitting Daily Precipitation Amounts Using the SB Distribution
journal, December 1981
- Swift, Lloyd W.; Schreuder, Hans T.
- Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 109, Issue 12
On “Field Significance” and the False Discovery Rate
journal, September 2006
- Wilks, D. S.
- Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, Vol. 45, Issue 9
Statistical Characteristics of Daily Precipitation: Comparisons of Gridded and Point Datasets
journal, September 2008
- Ensor, Leslie A.; Robeson, Scott M.
- Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, Vol. 47, Issue 9
Changes in the Duration of European Wet and Dry Spells during the Last 60 Years
journal, March 2013
- Zolina, Olga; Simmer, Clemens; Belyaev, Konstantin
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 6
Multi-model ensemble estimates of climate change impacts on UK seasonal precipitation extremes
journal, March 2009
- Fowler, H. J.; Ekström, M.
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 29, Issue 3
Monte Carlo Experiments on the Detection of Trends in Extreme Values
journal, May 2004
- Zhang, Xuebin; Zwiers, Francis W.; Li, Guilong
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 17, Issue 10
An Alternative Index for the Contribution of Precipitation on Very Wet Days to the Total Precipitation
journal, February 2014
- Leander, R.; Buishand, T. A.; Tank, A. M. G. Klein
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 27, Issue 4
Changes in Observed Daily Precipitation over the United States between 1950–79 and 1980–2009
journal, February 2013
- Higgins, R. W.; Kousky, V. E.
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 14, Issue 1
Improving Estimates of Heavy and Extreme Precipitation Using Daily Records from European Rain Gauges
journal, June 2009
- Zolina, Olga; Simmer, Clemens; Belyaev, Konstantin
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 10, Issue 3
Relationships between Climate Variability and Fluctuations in Daily Precipitation over the United States
journal, July 2007
- Higgins, R. W.; Silva, V. B. S.; Shi, W.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 20, Issue 14
Temporal variations of extreme precipitation events in the United States: 1895-2000: TEMPORAL VARIATIONS IN THE U.S.
journal, September 2003
- Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Easterling, David R.; Redmond, Kelly
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 30, Issue 17
Shifting seasonality and increasing frequency of precipitation in wet and dry seasons across the U.S.: U.S. PRECIPITATION SEASONALITY CHANGE
journal, August 2013
- Pal, Indrani; Anderson, Bruce T.; Salvucci, Guido D.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 40, Issue 15
A Deterministic Approach to the Validation of Historical Daily Temperature and Precipitation Data from the Cooperative Network
journal, June 1992
- Reek, Thomas; Doty, Stephen R.; Owen, Timothy W.
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 73, Issue 6
Contemporary Changes of the Hydrological Cycle over the Contiguous United States: Trends Derived from In Situ Observations
journal, February 2004
- Groisman, Pavel Ya; Knight, Richard W.; Karl, Thomas R.
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Interpolating mean rainfall using thin plate smoothing splines
journal, July 1995
- Hutchinson, M. F.
- International journal of geographical information systems, Vol. 9, Issue 4
A nonparametric plug-in rule for selecting optimal block lengths for block bootstrap methods
journal, July 2007
- Lahiri, S. N.; Furukawa, K.; Lee, Y. -D.
- Statistical Methodology, Vol. 4, Issue 3
Increase in the range between wet and dry season precipitation
journal, March 2013
- Chou, Chia; Chiang, John C. H.; Lan, Chia-Wei
- Nature Geoscience, Vol. 6, Issue 4
Variability and Trend in Seasonal Precipitation in the Continental United States
journal, June 2013
- Martino, Giuseppe De; Fontana, Nicola; Marini, Gustavo
- Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, Vol. 18, Issue 6
On the Verification and Comparison of Extreme Rainfall Indices from Climate Models
journal, April 2008
- Chen, Cheng-Ta; Knutson, Thomas
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 21, Issue 7
Development of daily precipitation projections for the United States based on probabilistic downscaling
journal, January 2010
- Schoof, J. T.; Pryor, S. C.; Surprenant, J.
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 115, Issue D13
Going to the Extremes: An Intercomparison of Model-Simulated Historical and Future Changes in Extreme Events
journal, October 2006
- Tebaldi, Claudia; Hayhoe, Katharinec; Arblaster, Julie M.
- Climatic Change, Vol. 79, Issue 3-4
Variability and trends in dry day frequency and dry event length in the southwestern United States
journal, January 2010
- McCabe, Gregory J.; Legates, David R.; Lins, Harry F.
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 115, Issue D7
The Potential Predictability of Precipitation Occurrence, Intensity, and Seasonal Totals over the Continental United States
journal, September 2014
- Short Gianotti, Daniel J.; Anderson, Bruce T.; Salvucci, Guido D.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 27, Issue 18
Changes in daily precipitation under enhanced greenhouse conditions
journal, September 1997
- Hennessy, K. J.; Gregory, J. M.; Mitchell, J. F. B.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 13, Issue 9
Comparison of observed and multimodeled trends in annual extremes of temperature and precipitation
journal, January 2007
- Kiktev, Dmitry; Caesar, John; Alexander, Lisa V.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, Issue 10
The Detection and Attribution of Human Influence on Climate
journal, November 2009
- Stone, Dáithí A.; Allen, Myles R.; Stott, Peter A.
- Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 34, Issue 1
Changes in Intense Precipitation over the Central United States
journal, February 2012
- Groisman, Pavel Ya.; Knight, Richard W.; Karl, Thomas R.
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 13, Issue 1
What Do Rain Gauges Tell Us about the Limits of Precipitation Predictability?
journal, August 2013
- Gianotti, Dan; Anderson, Bruce T.; Salvucci, Guido D.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 15
Interannual variability and extreme-value characteristics of several stochastic daily precipitation models
journal, March 1999
- Wilks, D. S.
- Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 93, Issue 3
Attribution of the Seasonality and Regionality in Climate Trends over the United States during 1950–2000
journal, May 2009
- Wang, Hailan; Schubert, Siegfried; Suarez, Max
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 22, Issue 10
Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation
journal, January 2006
- Alexander, L. V.; Zhang, X.; Peterson, T. C.
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 111, Issue D5
Atmospheric Warming and the Amplification of Precipitation Extremes
journal, August 2008
- Allan, Richard P.; Soden, Brian J.
- Science, Vol. 321, Issue 5895
A Monte Carlo Assessment of Uncertainties in Heavy Precipitation Frequency Variations
journal, October 2007
- Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Karl, Thomas R.; Easterling, David R.
- Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 8, Issue 5
Monitoring and Understanding Trends in Extreme Storms: State of Knowledge
journal, April 2013
- Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Karl, Thomas R.; Brooks, Harold
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 94, Issue 4
Variability and extremes of daily rainfall during the Indian summer monsoon in the period 1901–1989
journal, December 2004
- May, Wilhelm
- Global and Planetary Change, Vol. 44, Issue 1-4
Estimates of the Regression Coefficient Based on Kendall's Tau
journal, December 1968
- Sen, Pranab Kumar
- Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 63, Issue 324
Observed coherent changes in climatic extremes during the second half of the twentieth century
journal, January 2002
- Frich, P.; Alexander, Lv; Della-Marta, P.
- Climate Research, Vol. 19
Detection Probability of Trends in Rare Events: Theory and Application to Heavy Precipitation in the Alpine Region
journal, April 2001
- Frei, Christoph; Schär, Christoph
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 14, Issue 7
Hemispheric-scale climate response to Northern Eurasia land surface characteristics and snow anomalies
journal, April 2007
- Gong, Gavin; Cohen, Judah; Entekhabi, Dara
- Global and Planetary Change, Vol. 56, Issue 3-4
Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment
report, January 2014
- Melillo, J. M.; Richmond, Terese (T. C.); Yohe, G. W.
Deterministic versus stochastic trends: Detection and challenges
journal, January 2009
- Fatichi, S.; Barbosa, S. M.; Caporali, E.
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 114, Issue D18
Spatial analysis of variations in precipitation intensity in the USA
journal, October 2010
- Balling, Robert C.; Goodrich, Gregory B.
- Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Vol. 104, Issue 3-4
Probabilistic estimates of recent changes in temperature: a multi-scale attribution analysis
journal, June 2009
- Christidis, Nikolaos; Stott, Peter A.; Zwiers, Francis W.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 34, Issue 7-8
Detection of human influence on twentieth-century precipitation trends
journal, July 2007
- Zhang, Xuebin; Zwiers, Francis W.; Hegerl, Gabriele C.
- Nature, Vol. 448, Issue 7152
Secular Trends of Precipitation Amount, Frequency, and Intensity in the United States
journal, February 1998
- Karl, Thomas R.; Knight, Richard W.
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 79, Issue 2
Indices for monitoring changes in extremes based on daily temperature and precipitation data: Indices for monitoring changes in extremes
journal, October 2011
- Zhang, Xuebin; Alexander, Lisa; Hegerl, Gabriele C.
- Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Vol. 2, Issue 6
Observed Variability and Trends in Extreme Climate Events: A Brief Review *
journal, March 2000
- Easterling, D. R.; Evans, J. L.; Groisman, P. Ya
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 81, Issue 3
Regional Precipitation Trends: Distinguishing Natural Variability from Anthropogenic Forcing
journal, April 2010
- Hoerling, Martin; Eischeid, Jon; Perlwitz, Judith
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 23, Issue 8
Signal detectability in extreme precipitation changes assessed from twentieth century climate simulations
journal, February 2008
- Min, Seung-Ki; Zhang, Xuebin; Zwiers, Francis W.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 32, Issue 1
Consistency of observed winter precipitation trends in northern Europe with regional climate change projections
journal, December 2007
- Bhend, Jonas; von Storch, Hans
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 31, Issue 1
How spatially coherent and statistically robust are temporal changes in extreme precipitation in the contiguous USA?
journal, January 2009
- Pryor, S. C.; Howe, J. A.; Kunkel, K. E.
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 29, Issue 1
Controlling the Proportion of Falsely Rejected Hypotheses when Conducting Multiple Tests with Climatological Data
journal, November 2004
- Ventura, Valérie; Paciorek, Christopher J.; Risbey, James S.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 17, Issue 22
Trends in Intense Precipitation in the Climate Record
journal, May 2005
- Groisman, Pavel Ya; Knight, Richard W.; Easterling, David R.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 18, Issue 9
Regression and time series model selection in small samples
journal, January 1989
- Hurvich, Clifford M.; Tsai, Chih-Ling
- Biometrika, Vol. 76, Issue 2