Abstract
Tree-ring reconstructed summer Palmer Drought Severity Indices (PDSI) are used to identify decadal droughts more severe and prolonged than any witnessed during the instrumental period. These “megadroughts” are identified at two spatial scales, the North American continental scale (exclusive of Alaska and boreal Canada) and at the sub-continental scale over western North America. Intense decadal droughts have had significant environmental and socioeconomic impacts, as is illustrated with historical information. Only one prolonged continent-wide megadrought during the past 500 years exceeded the decadal droughts witnessed during the instrumental period, but three megadroughts occurred over the western sector of North America from a.d. 1300 to 1900. The early 20th century pluvial appears to have been unmatched at either the continental or sub-continental scale during the past 500 to 700 years. The decadal droughts of the 20th century, and the reconstructed megadroughts during the six previous centuries, all covered large sectors of western North America and in some cases extended into the eastern United States. All of these persistent decadal droughts included shorter duration cells of regional drought (sub-decadal ≈ 6 years), most of which resemble the regional patterns of drought identified with monthly and annual data during the 20th century. These well-known regional drought patterns are also characterized by unique monthly precipitation climatologies. Intense sub-decadal drought shifted among these drought regions during the modern and reconstructed multi-year droughts, which prolonged large-scale drought and resulted in the regimes of megadrought.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Acuña Soto R, Stahle DW, Cleaveland MK, Therrell MD (2002) Megadrought and megadeath in 16th century Mexico. Emerg Infect Dis 8(4):360–362
Cobb KM, Charles CD, Edwards RL, Cheng H, Kastner M (2003) El Nino/southern Oscillation and the tropical Pacific climate during the last millennium. Nature 424:271–276
Cook ER, Meko DM, Stahle DW, Cleaveland MK (1999) Drought reconstructions for the continental United States. J Climate 12:1145–1162
Cook ER, Woodhouse C, Eakin CM, Meko DM, Stahle DW (2004) Long-term aridity changes in the western United States. Science 306:1015–1018
Cook ER, Seager R, Cane MA, Stahle DW (2007) North American drought: reconstructions, causes, and consequences (in press)
Dai D, Trenberth KE, Karl TR (1998) Geophys Res Lett 25:3367
Diaz HF (1983) Some aspects of major dry and wet periods in the contiguous United States, 1895–1981. J Clim Appl Meteorol 22:3–16
Drought Monitor (2006) U.S. Drought Monitor, May 2, 2006 (and archives). http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm
Foreman G (1934) The five civilized tribes. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, p 455
Fritts HC (1976) Tree rings and climate. Academic, New York, p 567
Fritts HC Smith DG, Cardis JW, Budelsky CA (1965) Tree-ring characteristics along a vegetation gradient in northern Arizona. Ecology 46:393–401
Fye FK, Stahle DW, Cook ER (2003) Paleoclimatic analogs to 20th century moisture regimes across the USA. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 84:901–909
Geiser SW (1937) Naturalists of the frontier. Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, Texas
Herweijer Seager CR, Cook ER (2006) North American droughts of the mid to late nineteenth century: a history, simulation and implication for Mediaeval drought. Holocene 16:159–171
Hunt BG, Elliott TI (2002) Mexican megadrought. Clim Dyn 20:1–12
Julian PR, Fritts HC (1968) On the possibility of quantitatively extending climatic records by means of Dendrochronological analysis. Proceedings of the First Statistical Meteorology Conference, American Meteorological Society, Hartford, CN, pp 76–82
Karl TR, Koscielny AJ (1982) Drought in the United States. J Climatol 2:313–329
Laird KR et al (2003) Proc Natl Acad Sci 100:2483
Ludlum DW (1968) Early American winters II, 1821–1870. American Meteorological Society, Boston
Mann ME, Cane MA, Zebiak SE, Clement A (2005) Volcanic and solar forcing of El Nino over the past 1000 years. J Climate 18:447–456
Meko DM, Stockton CW, Boggess WR (1995) The tree-ring record of severe sustained drought. Water Resour Bull 31:789–801
Mitasova H, Hofierka L (1992) Interpolation by regularized spline with tension: I. Application to terrain modeling and surface geometry analysis. Math Geol 25:657–669
Mooney J (1979) Calendar history of the Kiowa Indians. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., p 460 (originally published in 1898)
Palmer WC (1965) Meteorological drought. Research Paper No. 45, U.S. Weather Bureau, p 58
Schubert SD, Suarez MJ, Pegion PJ, Koster RD, Bacmeister JT (2004) Causes of long-term drought in the United States Great Plains. J Climate 17:485–503
Schulman E (1956) Dendroclimatic changes in semiarid America. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, p 142
Seager R, Kushnir Y, Herweijer C, Naik N, Miller J (2005) Modeling of tropical forcing of persistent droughts and pluvials over western North America: 1856–2000. J Climate 18:4065–4088
Stahle DW, Cleaveland MK (1988) Texas drought history reconstructed and analyzed from 1698 to 1980. J Climate 1:59–74
Stahle DW, Cleaveland MK (1992) Reconstruction and analysis of spring rainfall over the Southeastern U.S. for the past 1000 years. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 73:1947–1961
Stahle DW, Dean JS (2007) Tree ring evidence for North American climatic extremes and social disasters. Dendroclimatology: Progress and Prospects. Developments in Paleoecological Research, Springer, (in press)
Stahle DW, Cleaveland MK, Blanton DB, Therrell MD, Gay DA (1998) The lost colony and Jamestown droughts. Science 280:564–567
Stahle DW, Cook ER, Cleaveland MK, Therrell MD, Meko DM, Grissino-Mayer HD, Watson E, Luckman BH (2000) Tree-ring data document 16th century megadrought over North America. Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 81(12):212, 125
Stahle DW, Cleaveland MK, Griffin RD, Spond MD, Fye FK, Culpepper RB, Patton D (2006) Decadal drought effects on endangered woodpecker habitat. Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 87(12):121, 125
Stine S (1994) Extreme and persistent drought in California and Patagonia during mediaeval time Nature 369:546–549
West E (1995) The way to the west: Essays on the Central Plains. University of New Mexico Press, p 244
Worster D (1979) Dust bowl, The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford University Press, p 277
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stahle, D.W., Fye, F.K., Cook, E.R. et al. Tree-ring reconstructed megadroughts over North America since a.d. 1300. Climatic Change 83, 133–149 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-006-9171-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-006-9171-x