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Climate extreme and its linkage to regional drought over Idaho, USA

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Abstract

To investigate consequences of climate extreme and variability on agriculture and regional water resource, twenty-seven climatic indices of temperature and precipitation over Idaho, USA, were computed. Precipitation, mean temperature and maximum temperature, self-calibrated Palmer Drought Index and Standardized Precipitation Index for 1-, 3-, 6- and 12-month time scales were used to identify spatial and temporal distribution of climatic extreme and variability as well as drought frequency and magnitude. Seven oceanic indices were also used to detect teleconnections between climatic indices and regional droughts. The analyses were conducted for 56 meteorological stations, during 1962–2008, characterized by a long-term and high-quality data set. The result indicates that decreasing trends and increasing trends are identified for precipitation and temperature, respectively. Consequently, it appears that frost and ice days dwindle as growing season (May–August) length, tropical nights and summer days increase. Given current climate conditions, the results also imply that these trends will continue in the future possibly driven by uncertain climate variability. We anticipate that these indices explained by teleconnections will improve drought-forecasting capability in this region.

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Acknowledgments

This research was mainly funded by the NSF Idaho EPSCoR Program and by the National Science Foundation under award number EPS-0814387. Partial funding support for Jae Ryu is also made from NASA under award No NNX08AL94G. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NSF and NASA. Any queries should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of Idaho, Boise, ID, 83702, USA

    Mohammad M. Sohrabi & Jae H. Ryu

  2. Department of Geography, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844, USA

    John Abatzoglou

  3. Idaho Water Resources Research Institute, University of Idaho, Boise, ID, 83702, USA

    John Tracy

Authors
  1. Mohammad M. Sohrabi
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  2. Jae H. Ryu
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  3. John Abatzoglou
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  4. John Tracy
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Correspondence to Jae H. Ryu.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 4, 5 and 6.

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Sohrabi, M.M., Ryu, J.H., Abatzoglou, J. et al. Climate extreme and its linkage to regional drought over Idaho, USA. Nat Hazards 65, 653–681 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0384-1

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