Wetter California Projected by CMIP6 Models With Observational Constraints Under a High GHG Emission Scenario
Abstract
As the world's fifth-largest economy entity, California (CA) is vulnerable to climate changes especially the magnitude of winter (wet season) precipitation that is closely linked to regional drought severity, vegetation growth, and wildfire activities. However, the fate of CA precipitation in the future remains highly uncertain, for example, the state-of-the-art Earth system models (ESMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) projected –3% to +42% and –27% to +63% precipitation changes in northern and central-southern CA, respectively, under the high greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenario (SSP585). In this work, we applied the Pareto optimality concept and used observed teleconnection patterns (causal relationships between ocean regions and CA precipitation) to mechanistically constrain CMIP6 projected CA precipitations. We estimated that precipitation will robustly increase by 0.4–1.3 mm d–1 (10–34%) over northern CA and increase by 0.1–0.5 mm d–1 (7–32%) over central-southern CA by the end of the 21st century compared with present-day. Up to 71% of ESM projection uncertainties were reduced mainly due to the strong and consistent causal relationship between North American west coast sea level pressure and CA precipitation in both observations and CMIP6 models. Our results suggest that teleconnection patterns are powerful mechanistic constraints that can helpmore »
- Authors:
-
[2];
[2];
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Wuhan Univ. (China)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Wuhan Univ. (China)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1883336
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Earth's Future
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 10; Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 2328-4277
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; California precipitation; CMIP6 model projections; uncertainty reduction; causal inference
Citation Formats
Li, Fa, Zhu, Qing, Riley, William J., Yuan, Kunxiaojia, Wu, Huayi, and Gui, Zhipeng. Wetter California Projected by CMIP6 Models With Observational Constraints Under a High GHG Emission Scenario. United States: N. p., 2022.
Web. doi:10.1029/2022ef002694.
Li, Fa, Zhu, Qing, Riley, William J., Yuan, Kunxiaojia, Wu, Huayi, & Gui, Zhipeng. Wetter California Projected by CMIP6 Models With Observational Constraints Under a High GHG Emission Scenario. United States. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022ef002694
Li, Fa, Zhu, Qing, Riley, William J., Yuan, Kunxiaojia, Wu, Huayi, and Gui, Zhipeng. Sat .
"Wetter California Projected by CMIP6 Models With Observational Constraints Under a High GHG Emission Scenario". United States. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022ef002694. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1883336.
@article{osti_1883336,
title = {Wetter California Projected by CMIP6 Models With Observational Constraints Under a High GHG Emission Scenario},
author = {Li, Fa and Zhu, Qing and Riley, William J. and Yuan, Kunxiaojia and Wu, Huayi and Gui, Zhipeng},
abstractNote = {As the world's fifth-largest economy entity, California (CA) is vulnerable to climate changes especially the magnitude of winter (wet season) precipitation that is closely linked to regional drought severity, vegetation growth, and wildfire activities. However, the fate of CA precipitation in the future remains highly uncertain, for example, the state-of-the-art Earth system models (ESMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) projected –3% to +42% and –27% to +63% precipitation changes in northern and central-southern CA, respectively, under the high greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenario (SSP585). In this work, we applied the Pareto optimality concept and used observed teleconnection patterns (causal relationships between ocean regions and CA precipitation) to mechanistically constrain CMIP6 projected CA precipitations. We estimated that precipitation will robustly increase by 0.4–1.3 mm d–1 (10–34%) over northern CA and increase by 0.1–0.5 mm d–1 (7–32%) over central-southern CA by the end of the 21st century compared with present-day. Up to 71% of ESM projection uncertainties were reduced mainly due to the strong and consistent causal relationship between North American west coast sea level pressure and CA precipitation in both observations and CMIP6 models. Our results suggest that teleconnection patterns are powerful mechanistic constraints that can help explain and reduce uncertainties in ESM projections.},
doi = {10.1029/2022ef002694},
journal = {Earth's Future},
number = 4,
volume = 10,
place = {United States},
year = {Sat Mar 26 00:00:00 EDT 2022},
month = {Sat Mar 26 00:00:00 EDT 2022}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
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:
Rapid intensification of the emerging southwestern North American megadrought in 2020–2021
journal, February 2022
- Williams, A. Park; Cook, Benjamin I.; Smerdon, Jason E.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 12, Issue 3
ENSO and greenhouse warming
journal, August 2015
- Cai, Wenju; Santoso, Agus; Wang, Guojian
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 5, Issue 9
Future loss of Arctic sea-ice cover could drive a substantial decrease in California’s rainfall
journal, December 2017
- Cvijanovic, Ivana; Santer, Benjamin D.; Bonfils, Céline
- Nature Communications, Vol. 8, Issue 1
Identifying causal gateways and mediators in complex spatio-temporal systems
journal, October 2015
- Runge, Jakob; Petoukhov, Vladimir; Donges, Jonathan F.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Causes of change in Northern Hemisphere winter meridional winds and regional hydroclimate
journal, September 2015
- Simpson, Isla R.; Seager, Richard; Ting, Mingfang
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Skillful empirical subseasonal prediction of landfalling atmospheric river activity using the Madden–Julian oscillation and quasi-biennial oscillation
journal, February 2018
- Mundhenk, Bryan D.; Barnes, Elizabeth A.; Maloney, Eric D.
- npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, Vol. 1, Issue 1
Using Causal Effect Networks to Analyze Different Arctic Drivers of Midlatitude Winter Circulation
journal, June 2016
- Kretschmer, Marlene; Coumou, Dim; Donges, Jonathan F.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 29, Issue 11
Four Atmospheric Circulation Regimes Over the North Pacific and Their Relationship to California Precipitation on Daily to Seasonal Timescales
journal, August 2020
- Guirguis, Kristen; Gershunov, Alexander; DeFlorio, Michael J.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 47, Issue 16
Taking climate model evaluation to the next level
journal, January 2019
- Eyring, Veronika; Cox, Peter M.; Flato, Gregory M.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 9, Issue 2
Detecting and quantifying causal associations in large nonlinear time series datasets
journal, November 2019
- Runge, Jakob; Nowack, Peer; Kretschmer, Marlene
- Science Advances, Vol. 5, Issue 11
Using multi-model ensembles of CMIP5 global climate models to reproduce observed monthly rainfall and temperature with machine learning methods in Australia
journal, July 2018
- Wang, Bin; Zheng, Lihong; Liu, De Li
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 38, Issue 13
Amplified Madden–Julian oscillation impacts in the Pacific–North America region
journal, June 2020
- Zhou, Wenyu; Yang, Da; Xie, Shang-Ping
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 10, Issue 7
Climate and wildfire area burned in western U.S. ecoprovinces, 1916–2003
journal, June 2009
- Littell, Jeremy S.; McKenzie, Donald; Peterson, David L.
- Ecological Applications, Vol. 19, Issue 4
The Atmospheric Bridge: The Influence of ENSO Teleconnections on Air–Sea Interaction over the Global Oceans
journal, August 2002
- Alexander, Michael A.; Bladé, Ileana; Newman, Matthew
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 15, Issue 16
Increasing precipitation volatility in twenty-first-century California
journal, April 2018
- Swain, Daniel L.; Langenbrunner, Baird; Neelin, J. David
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 8, Issue 5
Communication of the role of natural variability in future North American climate
journal, October 2012
- Deser, Clara; Knutti, Reto; Solomon, Susan
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 2, Issue 11
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Revisited
journal, June 2016
- Newman, Matthew; Alexander, Michael A.; Ault, Toby R.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 29, Issue 12
Global hotspots and correlates of emerging zoonotic diseases
journal, October 2017
- Allen, Toph; Murray, Kris A.; Zambrana-Torrelio, Carlos
- Nature Communications, Vol. 8, Issue 1
An Information Theory Approach to Identifying a Representative Subset of Hydro‐Climatic Simulations for Impact Modeling Studies
journal, August 2018
- Pechlivanidis, I. G.; Gupta, H.; Bosshard, T.
- Water Resources Research, Vol. 54, Issue 8
Is There a Role for Human-Induced Climate Change in the Precipitation Decline that Drove the California Drought?
journal, December 2017
- Seager, Richard; Henderson, Naomi; Cane, Mark A.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 30, Issue 24
The Influence of the Madden–Julian Oscillation on Northern Hemisphere Winter Blocking
journal, June 2016
- Henderson, Stephanie A.; Maloney, Eric D.; Barnes, Elizabeth A.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 29, Issue 12
California Winter Precipitation Change under Global Warming in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 Ensemble
journal, September 2013
- Neelin, J. David; Langenbrunner, Baird; Meyerson, Joyce E.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 17
Anthropogenic warming has increased drought risk in California
journal, March 2015
- Diffenbaugh, Noah S.; Swain, Daniel L.; Touma, Danielle
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 112, Issue 13
Rotated Spectral Principal Component Analysis (rsPCA) for Identifying Dynamical Modes of Variability in Climate Systems
journal, January 2021
- Guilloteau, Clément; Mamalakis, Antonios; Vulis, Lawrence
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 34, Issue 2
Inferring causation from time series in Earth system sciences
journal, June 2019
- Runge, Jakob; Bathiany, Sebastian; Bollt, Erik
- Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Issue 1
Multiobjective constraints for climate model parameter choices: Pragmatic P areto fronts in CESM1
journal, September 2017
- Langenbrunner, B.; Neelin, J. D.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 9, Issue 5
Causes of the 2011–14 California Drought
journal, September 2015
- Seager, Richard; Hoerling, Martin; Schubert, Siegfried
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 28, Issue 18
Lessons from California’s 2012–2016 Drought
journal, October 2018
- Lund, Jay; Medellin-Azuara, Josue; Durand, John
- Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Vol. 144, Issue 10
A review of the relationships between drought and forest fire in the United States
journal, April 2016
- Littell, Jeremy S.; Peterson, David L.; Riley, Karin L.
- Global Change Biology, Vol. 22, Issue 7
A Reconstruction of Madden–Julian Oscillation Variability from 1905 to 2008
journal, March 2011
- Oliver, Eric C. J.; Thompson, Keith R.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 25, Issue 6
Non-linear dependence and teleconnections in climate data: sources, relevance, nonstationarity
journal, May 2013
- Hlinka, Jaroslav; Hartman, David; Vejmelka, Martin
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 42, Issue 7-8
Evolutionary Trade-Offs, Pareto Optimality, and the Geometry of Phenotype Space
journal, April 2012
- Shoval, O.; Sheftel, H.; Shinar, G.
- Science, Vol. 336, Issue 6085
California from drought to deluge
journal, June 2017
- Wang, S. -Y. Simon; Yoon, Jin-Ho; Becker, Emily
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 7, Issue 7
Non-random correlation structures and dimensionality reduction in multivariate climate data
journal, July 2014
- Vejmelka, Martin; Pokorná, Lucie; Hlinka, Jaroslav
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 44, Issue 9-10
A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation
journal, June 2018
- Allen, Myles R.; Shine, Keith P.; Fuglestvedt, Jan S.
- npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, Vol. 1, Issue 1
Relationships between Extratropical Sea Level Pressure Variations and the Central Pacific and Eastern Pacific Types of ENSO
journal, February 2011
- Yu, Jin-Yi; Kim, Seon Tae
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 24, Issue 3
Effect of recent Atlantic warming in strengthening Atlantic–Pacific teleconnection on interannual timescale via enhanced connection with the pacific meridional mode
journal, January 2019
- Park, Jae-Heung; Li, Tim; Yeh, Sang-Wook
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 53, Issue 1-2
Skill and independence weighting for multi-model assessments
journal, January 2017
- Sanderson, Benjamin M.; Wehner, Michael; Knutti, Reto
- Geoscientific Model Development, Vol. 10, Issue 6
Complete enumeration of pure-level and mixed-level orthogonal arrays
journal, August 2009
- Schoen, Eric D.; Eendebak, Pieter T.; Nguyen, Man V. M.
- Journal of Combinatorial Designs, Vol. 18, Issue 2
Quantifying the Role of Internal Climate Variability in Future Climate Trends
journal, August 2015
- Thompson, David W. J.; Barnes, Elizabeth A.; Deser, Clara
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 28, Issue 16
OApackage: A Python package for generation and analysis of orthogonal arrays, optimal designs and conference designs
journal, February 2019
- Eendebak, Pieter; Vazquez, Alan
- Journal of Open Source Software, Vol. 4, Issue 34
ESD Reviews: Model dependence in multi-model climate ensembles: weighting, sub-selection and out-of-sample testing
journal, January 2019
- Abramowitz, Gab; Herger, Nadja; Gutmann, Ethan
- Earth System Dynamics, Vol. 10, Issue 1
A climate model projection weighting scheme accounting for performance and interdependence: Model Projection Weighting Scheme
journal, January 2017
- Knutti, Reto; Sedláček, Jan; Sanderson, Benjamin M.
- Geophysical Research Letters
Pareto-Optimal Estimates of California Precipitation Change: PARETO-OPTIMAL PRECIPITATION CONSTRAINTS
journal, December 2017
- Langenbrunner, Baird; Neelin, J. David
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 44, Issue 24
Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity
journal, August 2006
- Westerling, A. L.
- Science, Vol. 313, Issue 5789
Expansion of the Hadley cell under global warming
journal, January 2007
- Lu, Jian; Vecchi, Gabriel A.; Reichler, Thomas
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, Issue 6
Significant modulation of variability and projected change in California winter precipitation by extratropical cyclone activity: CALIFORNIA PRECIPITATION AND CYCLONES
journal, July 2015
- Chang, Edmund K. M.; Zheng, Cheng; Lanigan, Patrick
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 42, Issue 14
Trends in atmospheric patterns conducive to seasonal precipitation and temperature extremes in California
journal, April 2016
- Swain, Daniel L.; Horton, Daniel E.; Singh, Deepti
- Science Advances, Vol. 2, Issue 4
Causal networks for climate model evaluation and constrained projections
journal, March 2020
- Nowack, Peer; Runge, Jakob; Eyring, Veronika
- Nature Communications, Vol. 11, Issue 1
Empirical orthogonal functions and related techniques in atmospheric science: A review
journal, January 2007
- Hannachi, A.; Jolliffe, I. T.; Stephenson, D. B.
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 27, Issue 9
The North Pacific Oscillation–West Pacific Teleconnection Pattern: Mature-Phase Structure and Winter Impacts
journal, May 2008
- Linkin, Megan E.; Nigam, Sumant
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 21, Issue 9
A new interhemispheric teleconnection increases predictability of winter precipitation in southwestern US
journal, June 2018
- Mamalakis, Antonios; Yu, Jin-Yi; Randerson, James T.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue 1