Publication Abstracts
Coats and Mankin 2016
Coats, S., and , 2016: The challenge of accurately quantifying future megadrought risk in the American Southwest. Geophys. Res. Lett., no. 17, 9225-9233, doi:10.1002/2016GL070445.
American Southwest (ASW) megadroughts represent decadal-scale periods of dry conditions, the near-term risks of which arise from natural low-frequency hydroclimate variability and anthropogenic forcing. A large single-climate-model ensemble indicates that anthropogenic forcing increases near-term ASW megadrought risk by a factor of 100; however, accurate risk assessment remains a challenge. At the global-scale we find that anthropogenic forcing may alter the variability driving megadroughts over 55% of land areas, undermining accurate assessments of their risk. For the remaining areas, current ensembles are too small to characterize megadroughts' driving variability. For example, constraining uncertainty in near-term ASW megadrought risk to 5 percentage points with high confidence requires 287 simulations. Such ensemble sizes are beyond current computational and storage resources, and these limitations suggest that constraining errors in near-term megadrought risk projections with high confidence — even in places where underlying variability is stationary — is not currently possible.
Export citation: [ BibTeX ] [ RIS ]
BibTeX Citation
@article{co05900r,
author={Coats, S. and Mankin, J. S.},
title={The challenge of accurately quantifying future megadrought risk in the American Southwest},
year={2016},
journal={Geophysical Research Letters},
number={17},
pages={9225--9233},
doi={10.1002/2016GL070445},
}
[ Close ]
RIS Citation
TY - JOUR ID - co05900r AU - Coats, S. AU - Mankin, J. S. PY - 2016 TI - The challenge of accurately quantifying future megadrought risk in the American Southwest JA - Geophys. Res. Lett. JO - Geophysical Research Letters IS - 17 SP - 9225 EP - 9233 DO - 10.1002/2016GL070445 ER -
[ Close ]
