The Shifting Scales of Western U.S. Landfalling Atmospheric Rivers Under Climate Change

Abstract

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) can be a boon and bane to water resource managers as they have the ability to replenish water reserves, but they can also generate million‐to‐billion‐dollar flood damages. To investigate how anthropogenic climate change may influence AR characteristics in the coastal western United States by end century, we employ a suite of novel tools such as variable resolution in the Community Earth System Model (VR‐CESM), the TempestExtremes AR detection algorithm, and the Ralph, Rutz, et al. (2019, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0023.1) AR category scale. We show that end‐century ARs primarily shift from being “mostly or primarily beneficial” to “mostly or primarily hazardous” with a concomitant sharpening and intensification of winter season precipitation totals. Changes in precipitation totals are due to a significant increase in AR (+260%) rather than non‐AR (+7%) precipitation, largely through increases in the most intense category of AR events and a decrease in the interval between landfalling ARs.

Uncertainties in Atmospheric River Lifecycles by Detection Algorithms: Climatology and Variability

“…subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction (DeFlorio, Waliser, Guan, Lavers, et al, 2018;Lavers et al, 2014;), and future projections (Gershunov et al, 2019;Lavers et al, 2013;Payne & Magnusdottir, 2015;Radić et al, 2015;Rhoades, Jones, Srivastava, et al, 2020;Shields & Kiehl, 2016b).…”

Projecting the impacts of end of century climate extremes on the hydrology in California

“…Changes in fluxes and storages over the course of each WY, as well as the spatial variability of these changes in two important periods of the WY (peak flow and baseflow) are also shown. Neelin et al, 2013;Swain et al, 2013;Gershunov et al, 2019;Rhoades et al, 2020b;Persad et al, 2020) and, for select climate models, that it could be drier. Notably, these studies highlight an asymmetric response in the frequency of wet versus dry WYs (i.e., anomalously wet WYs increase in frequency much more in the future than anomalously dry WYs).…”

“…Similarly, risk management plans and/or infrastructure for floods, landslides, and other water surplus associated hazards (such as dam failure) may also require reconsideration. This will be especially true if periods of precipitation, including those associated with atmospheric rivers, become more extreme, variable, and occur over a shorter window of time (Swain et al, 2018;Gershunov et al, 2019;Huang et al, 2020;Rhoades et al, 2020b;Rhoades et al, 2021). Changes in water availability due to climate "whiplash" will also have important ramifications for water resource management (Wang et al, 2017;Swain et al, 2018) and significantly increase annual flood damages based on the level of global warming that occurs (Rhoades et al, 2021).…”

Design of Internet of Things and big data analytics-based disaster risk management

“…Disaster may have a human origin is sometimes triggered by nature (Anbarasan et al 2020). Disaster management may be defined as the coordination and control of humanitarian emergency responsibilities in planning, response, and recovery to mitigate the disaster's consequences (Rhoades et al 2020).…”