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Quantifying the evolving role of intense precipitation runoff when calculating soil moisture trends in east Texas

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Abstract

Eastern Texas straddles a precipitation zone that transitions from semi-arid grasslands to the humid, rainy conditions of the northern Gulf Coast. While several studies have quantified the changing magnitude and frequency of daily extreme events, the paucity of hourly datasets have limited insight into how the growing proportion of rainfall exceeding hourly soil infiltration capacity has and will exacerbate the state’s droughts. This paper builds on previous analysis, deploying algorithms with a temporal dimension to calculate soil moisture scarcity from evapotranspiration and precipitation data based on FAO-56 methodology and then introduces a daily estimate of the proportion of precipitation that flows off the ground surface rather than replenishing moisture deficits for soils with three different infiltrative capacities at 12 observation sites. The comparison of subsequent time-series regression analyses showed that absorptive soils in east Texas have experienced modest, though mostly statistically insignificant, acceleration in drought trends after the incorporation of hourly rainfall intensity data: for the 24 soil samples (out of 36) with saturated hydraulic conductivity \(\left( {K_{{{\text{sat}}}} } \right)\) rates greater than 4.5 mm per hour, 14 had accelerated drying trends, five showed no change, and the remaining five displayed more gradual changes relative to their baseline trend magnitudes.

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Data availability

All climate data (Global Historical Climatology Network, Global Summary of the Day, Integrated Surface Database, and US Climate Reference Network) is publicly available and was obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Information (https://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/maps/ncei, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn), with the exception of solar radiation data, publicly available at http://climateengine.org.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express deep gratitude to Professor Ophir Frieder (Georgetown University Department of Computer Science) for facilitating data access, USDA Texas State Soil Scientist Alan Stahnke, and Paul Koszarek of Terracon Geotechnical Services. They also wish to thank Kyle Belott of R.A. Smith and Associates for his graphics expertise. The background of Figure 2 was taken by Petr Kratochvil and used under Public Domain License.

Funding

Der-Chen Chang’s research is partially supported by a National Science Foundation Grant (DMS-1408839) and the McDevitt Endowment Fund at Georgetown University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    Robert Kennedy Smith, Der-Chen Chang & Yiming Chen

  2. Graduate Institution of Business Admissions, College of Management, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Der-Chen Chang

  3. State Meteorological Agency (AEMET), Balearic Islands Office, Palma, Spain

    José A. Guijarro

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  1. Robert Kennedy Smith
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Correspondence to Robert Kennedy Smith.

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José A. Guijarro: Retired from State Meteorological Agency (AEMET), Balearic Islands Office, Palma, Spain

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Smith, R.K., Chang, DC., Guijarro, J.A. et al. Quantifying the evolving role of intense precipitation runoff when calculating soil moisture trends in east Texas. Meteorol Atmos Phys 135, 8 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-022-00947-w

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