Recent Wyoming temperature trends, their drivers, and impacts in a 14,000-year context

Climatic Change - Tập 112 - Trang 429-447 - 2011
Bryan Shuman1
1Department of Geology & Geophysics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA

Tóm tắt

Wyoming provides more fossil fuels to the remainder of the United States than any other state or country, and its citizens remain skeptical of anthropogenic influences on their climate. However, much of the state including Yellowstone National Park and the headwaters of several major river systems, may have already been affected by rising temperatures. This paper examines the historic climate record from Wyoming in the context of ∼14,000-year temperature reconstructions based on fossil pollen data. The analysis shows that 24 of 30 U.S. Historical Climatology Network records from the state show an increase in the frequency of unusually warm years since 1978. Statewide temperatures have included 15 years (50%) from 1978 to 2007 that were greater than 1σ above the mean annual temperature for 1895–1978. The frequent warm years coincide with a reduction in the frequency of extremely low (<−20°C) January temperatures, and are not well explained by factors such as solar irradiance and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Linear regressions require inclusion of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to explain the multi-decadal temperature trends. The observed warming is large in Yellowstone National Park where 21 years (70%) from 1978 to 2007 were greater than 1σ above the 1895–1978 mean; the deviation from the mean (>1°C) is greater than any time in the past 6,000 years. Recent temperatures have become as high as those experienced from 11,000 to 6,000 years ago when summer insolation was >6% higher than today and when regional ecosystems experienced frequent severe disturbances.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Alley RB, Arblaster J, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Working Group, I (2007) Climate change 2007 the physical science basis: summary for policymakers: contribution of Working Group I to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. WMO, IPCC Secretariat, Geneva Baker RG (1976) Late Quaternary vegetation history of the Yellowstone Lake Basin, Wyoming. United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 729-E Barnett TP, Pierce DW, Hidalgo HG, Bonfils C, Santer BD, Das T, Bala G, Wood AW, Nozawa T, Mirin AA, Cayan DR, Dettinger MD (2008) Human-induced changes in the hydrology of the western United States. Science 319:1080–1083 Berger A, Loutre MF (1991) Insolation values for the climate of the last 10 million years. Quat Sci Rev 10:297 Bleizeffer D (2008) Most Wyomingites question global warming, poll shows. Casper Star-Tribune, Casper Bonfils C, Santer BD, Pierce DW, Hidalgo HG, Bala G, Das T, Barnett TP, Cayan DR, Doutriaux C, Wood AW, Mirin A, Nozawa T (2008) Detection and attribution of temperature changes in the mountainous western United States. J Clim 21:6404–6424 Brunelle A, Rehfeldt GE, Bentz B, Munson AS (2008) Holocene records of Dendroctonus bark beetles in high elevation pine forests of Idaho and Montana USA. Forest Ecol Manag 255:836–846 Bureau of Reclamation (2007) Upper Colorado Region Reservoir Operations, Upper Colorado Reservoir Data, http://www.usbr.gov/uc/crsp/GetSiteInfo Burkart MR (1976) Pollen biostratigraphy and late Quaternary vegetation history of the Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming. University of Iowa, Iowa City Cayan DR (1996) Interannual climate variability and snowpack in the western United States. J Clim 9:928–948 Census U.S. (2010) Resident population data. In: Bureau, U.S.C. (ed). Washington D. C Christy JR, Spencer RW, Norris WB, Braswell WD, Parker DE (2003) Error estimates of version 5.0 of MSU-AMSU bulk atmospheric temperatures. J Atmos Ocean Tech 20:613–629 Crichton M (2004) State of fear. Avon Books, New York Elliott GP (2011) Influences of 20th-century warming at the upper tree line contingent on local-scale interactions: evidence from a latitudinal gradient in the Rocky Mountains, USA. Global Ecol Biogeogr 20:46–57 Enfield DB, Mestas-Nuñez AM, Trimble PJ (2001) The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and its relation to rainfall and river flows in the continental U.S. Geophys Res Lett 28:2077–2080 Fall S, Watts A, Nielsen-Gammon J, Jones E, Niyogi D, Christy JR, Pielke RA Sr (2011) Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends. J Geophys Res 116:D14120 Forest Health Management Staff (2002) Forest insect and disease conditions in the Rocky Mountain Region: 2000–2001. USDA Forest Service, Lakewood Gosnold WD, Todhunter PE, Schmidt W (1997) The borehole temperature record of climate warming in the mid-continent of North America. Glob Planet Chang 15:33–45 Gray et al (2004) A tree-ring based reconstruction of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation since 1567 AD. Geophys Res Lett 31(12):L12205 Grimm EC (2010) North American pollen database. North American pollen database, IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology. NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, Colorado, USA Hansen J, Johnson D, Lacis A, Lebedeff S, Lee P, Rind D, Russell G (1981) Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science 213:957–966 Hansen J, Sato M, Ruedy R, Kharecha P, Lacis A, Miller R, Nazarenko L, Lo K, Schmidt G, Russell G, Aleinov I, Bauer S, Baum E, Cairns B, Canuto V, Chandler M, Cheng Y, Cohen A, Del Genio A, Faluvegi G, Fleming E, Friend A, Hall T, Jackman C, Jonas J, Kelley M, Kiang N, Koch D, Labow G, Lerner J, Menon S, Novakov T, Oinas V, Perlwitz J, Perlwitz J, Rind D, Romanou A, Schmunk R, Shindell D, Stone P, Sun S, Streets D, Tausnev N, Thresher D, Unger N, Yao M, Zhang S (2007) Climate simulations for 1880–2003 with GISS modelE. Clim Dyn 29:661–696 Huang S, Pollack HN, Shen P-Y (2000) Temperature trends over the past five centuries reconstructed from borehole temperatures. Nature 403:756–758 Hurrell JW (1995) Decadal trends in the north Atlantic oscillation: regional temperatures and precipitation. Science 269:676–679 Jackson ST, Gray S, Shuman B (2009) Paleoecology and resource management in a dynamic landscape: case studies from the Rocky Mountain Headwaters. In: Dietl GP, Flessa KW (eds) Conservation paleobiology: using the Past to Manage for the Future. The Paleontological Society Papers, vol 15, pp 61–80 Knudsen et al (2011) Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years. Nat Commun 2:178–180 Kurz WA, Dymond CC, Stinson G, Rampley GJ, Neilson ET, Carroll AL, Ebata T, Safranyik L (2008) Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change. Nature 452:987–990 Lean J (2000) Evolution of the sun’s spectral irradiance since the maunder minimum. Geophys Res Lett 27:2425–2428 Lean JL, Rind DH (2008) How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006. Geophys Res Lett 35:L18701 Mann ME, Emanuel KA (2006) Atlantic hurricane trends linked to climate change. EOS Trans Am Geophys Union 87:233–241 Mantua NJ, Hare SR, Zhang Y, Wallace JM, Francis RC (1997) A pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon production. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 78:1069 McCabe GJ, Palecki MA, Betancourt JL (2004) Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States. P Natl Acad Sci 101:4136–4141 Menne MJ, Williams CN Jr, Vose RS (2010a) United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) version 2 serial monthly dataset. In: O.R.N.L. (ed) Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. Oak Ridge, Tennessee Menne MJ, Williams CN Jr, Vose RS (2010b) United States historical climatology network daily temperature, precipitation, and snow data. In: O.R.N.L. (ed) Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. Oak Ridge, Tennessee Millspaugh SH, Whitlock C, Bartlein PJ (2000) Variations in fire frequency and climate over the past 17,000 yr in central Yellowstone National Park. Geology 28:211–214 Mote PW, Hamlet AF, Clark MP, Lettenmaier DP (2005) Declining mountain snowpack in western North America. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 86:39–49 National Interagency Fire Center (2011) Fire information - wildland fire statistics: http://www.nifc.gov/fire_info/fires_acres.htm NCDC (1994) Time bias corrected divisional temperature-precipitation-drought index. Documentation for dataset TD-9640. DBMB, NCDC, NOAA, Federal Building, 37 Battery Park Ave. Asheville, NC 28801–2733, Asheville, NC 28801–2733, p 12 NCDC (2010) Tropospheric and stratospheric temperature record from satellite measurements: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/msu/. NOAA Satellite and Information Service Pederson GT, Fagre DB, Gray ST, Graumlich LJ (2004) Decadal-scale climate drivers for glacial dynamics in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA. Geophys Res Lett 31:L12203 Pederson G, Graumlich L, Fagre D, Kipfer T, Muhlfeld C (2009) A century of climate and ecosystem change in Western Montana: what do temperature trends portend? Clim Chang 98:133–154 Pederson GT, Gray ST, Ault T, Marsh W, Fagre DB, Bunn AG, Woodhouse CA, Graumlich LJ (2011) Climatic controls on the snowmelt hydrology of the Northern Rocky Mountains. J Climate 24:1666–1687 Peixoto J, Oort A (1992) Physics of climate. American Institute of Physics Raffa KF, Aukema BH, Bentz BJ, Carroll AL, Hicke JA, Turner MG, Romme WH (2008) Cross-scale drivers of natural disturbances prone to anthropogenic amplification: the dynamics of bark beetle eruptions. BioScience 58:501–517 Ramanathan V (1988) The greenhouse theory of climate change: a test by an inadvertent global experiment. Science 240:293–299 Randel WJ, Shine KP, Austin J, Barnett J, Claud C, Gillett NP, Keckhut P, Langematz U, Lin R, Long C, Mears C, Miller A, Nash J, Seidel DJ, Thompson DWJ, Wu F, Yoden S (2009) An update of observed stratospheric temperature trends. J Geophys Res 114:D02107 R Core Development Team (2009) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna Sato M, Hansen JE, McCormick MP, Pollack JB (1993) Stratospheric aerosol optical depths, 1850–1990. J Geophys Res 98:22987–22994 Shinker JJ, Shuman BN, Minckley T, Henderson A (2010) Climatic shifts in the availability of contested waters: a long-term perspective from the headwaters of the North Platte River. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 100(4):866–879 Shuman B, Henderson AK, Colman SM, Stone JR, Fritz SC, Stevens LR, Power MJ, Whitlock C (2009) Holocene lake-level trends in the Rocky Mountains, U.S.A. Quaternary Sci Rev 28:1861–1879 Shuman B, Pribyl P, Minckley TA, Shinker JJ (2010) Rapid hydrologic shifts and prolonged droughts in Rocky Mountain headwaters during the Holocene. Geophys Res Lett 37:L06701 Stewart IT, Cayan DR, Dettinger MD (2004) Changes in snowmelt runoff timing in western North America under a ‘Business as Usual’ climate change scenario. Clim Chang 62:217 Surovell TA, Byrd Finley J, Smith GM, Brantingham PJ, Kelly R (2009) Correcting temporal frequency distributions for taphonomic bias. J Archaeol Sci 36:1715–1724 Tans P (2009) Mauna Loa CO2 monthly mean data. NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory Westerling AL, Hidalgo HG, Cayan DR, Swetnam TW (2006) Warming and earlier spring increase western U.S. forest wildfire activity. Science 313:940–943 Whitlock C (1993) Postglacial vegetation and climate of Grand-Teton and southern Yellowstone National Parks. Ecol Monogr 63:173–198 Whitlock C, Dean W, Rosenbaum J, Stevens L, Fritz S, Bracht B, Power M (2008) A 2650-year-long record of environmental change from northern Yellowstone National Park based on a comparison of multiple proxy data. Quat Int 188:126–138 Williams JW, Shuman B (2008) Obtaining accurate and precise environmental reconstructions from the modern analog technique and North American surface pollen dataset. Quat Sci Rev 27:669–687 Williams JW, Shuman B, Webb T III, Bartlein PJ, Leduc PL (2004) Late Quaternary vegetation dynamics in North America: scaling from taxa to biomes. Ecol Monogr 74:309–334 Willson RC (2007) ACRIM Composite TSI results (1978–2007): http://www.acrim.com/Data%20Products.htm