Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 41 (2014): 9017–9023, doi:10.1002/2014GL062433.
Description:
For the past three years (2012–2014), California has experienced the most severe drought conditions in its last century. But how unusual is this event? Here we use two paleoclimate reconstructions of drought and precipitation for Central and Southern California to place this current event in the context of the last millennium. We demonstrate that while 3 year periods of persistent below-average soil moisture are not uncommon, the current event is the most severe drought in the last 1200 years, with single year (2014) and accumulated moisture deficits worse than any previous continuous span of dry years. Tree ring chronologies extended through the 2014 growing season reveal that precipitation during the drought has been anomalously low but not outside the range of natural variability. The current California drought is exceptionally severe in the context of at least the last millennium and is driven by reduced though not unprecedented precipitation and record high temperatures.
Description:
D. G. was supported by a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship. Both authors also acknowledge the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Academic Program Office for support of this research.
Description:
2015-06-30
Keywords:
Drought
;
Tree rings
;
Paleoclimate
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
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