Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States
McCabe GJ, Palecki MA, Betancourt JL. 2004. Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). 101(12):4136-4141
From the Abstract: "More than half (52%) of the spatial and temporal variance in multidecadal drought frequency over the conterminous United States is attributable to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). An additional 22% of the variance in drought frequency is related to a complex spatial pattern of positive and negative trends in drought occurrence possibly related to increasing Northern Hemisphere temperatures or some other unidirectional climate trend. ... Should the current positive AMO (warm North Atlantic) conditions persist into the upcoming decade, we suggest two possible drought scenarios that resemble the continental-scale patterns of teh 1930s (positive PDO) and 1950s (negative PDO) drought."
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- McCabe, Gregory; Palecki, Michael; Betancourt, Julio
- Units
- OLYM
- Keywords
- Climate, Drought, Ecosystem Studies, Pacific decadal oscillation