Synoptic Scale Controls on Warm Season Precipitation Deficit in the US Northern Rockies: A Driver of Recent Wildfire Activities
Publication: World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2024
ABSTRACT
This study aims to better understand the forcing mechanisms of warm season wetting rain in the US Northern Rockies, which was recently reported to be a strong driver of wildfire area burned over the region. The event-based analysis using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with the latitudinal atmospheric boundary condition shifting method quantified precipitation responses to increasing Z500 with associated IVT changes over the region. As an average of the three target events, the event cumulative US Northern Rockies-average precipitation decreased by 33.6 mm (SD 2.7 mm) with a Z500 increase of 100 m over the western North America (WNA) region. Composite analysis of Z500 and IVT fields showed that the average Z500 was found to be 83.8 m higher on non-wetting rainy days than the average Z500 on wetting rainy days over the WNA-region (p < 0.001). Furthermore, using the decision tree-based machine learning algorithms, Z500 interannual variability was found to be positively correlated, especially with the central and western sectors of the Northern Pacific SST patterns.
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Published In
World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2024
Pages: 207 - 220
History
Published online: May 16, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Boundary conditions
- Boundary value problem
- Climates
- Differential equations
- Disaster risk management
- Disasters and hazards
- Driver behavior
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Equations (by type)
- Forecasting
- Infrastructure
- Mathematics
- Meteorology
- Natural disasters
- Precipitation
- Rainfall
- Seasonal variations
- Statistics
- Traffic engineering
- Transportation engineering
- Wild fires
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