Intensification of summer rainfall variability in the southeastern United States during recent decades

dc.contributor.author

Wang

dc.contributor.author

H

dc.contributor.author

Fu, R

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Kumar, A

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Li, W

dc.date.accessioned

2011-06-21T17:27:49Z

dc.date.issued

2010-08-01

dc.description.abstract

The variability of summer precipitation in the southeastern United States is examined in this study using 60-yr (1948-2007) rainfall data. The Southeast summer rainfalls exhibited higher interannual variability with more intense summer droughts and anomalous wetness in the recent 30 years (1978-2007) than in the prior 30 years (1948-77). Such intensification of summer rainfall variability was consistent with a decrease of light (0.1-1 mm day-1) and medium (1-10 mm day-1) rainfall events during extremely dry summers and an increase of heavy (.10 mm day-1) rainfall events in extremely wet summers. Changes in rainfall variability were also accompanied by a southward shift of the region of maximum zonal wind variability at the jet stream level in the latter period. The covariability between the Southeast summer precipitation and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) is also analyzed using the singular value decomposition (SVD) method. It is shown that the increase of Southeast summer precipitation variability is primarily associated with a higher SST variability across the equatorial Atlantic and also SST warming in the Atlantic. © 2010 American Meteorological Society.

dc.description.version

Version of Record

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1525-755X

dc.identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/4291

dc.language.iso

en_US

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American Meteorological Society

dc.relation.ispartof

Journal of Hydrometeorology

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10.1175/2010JHM1229.1

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Journal of Hydrometeorology

dc.title

Intensification of summer rainfall variability in the southeastern United States during recent decades

dc.title.alternative
dc.type

Journal article

duke.contributor.orcid

Li, W|0000-0002-5990-2004

duke.date.pubdate

2010-8-0

duke.description.issue

4

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11

pubs.begin-page

1007

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1018

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4

pubs.organisational-group

Civil and Environmental Engineering

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Duke

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Earth and Ocean Sciences

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Nicholas School of the Environment

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Pratt School of Engineering

pubs.publication-status

Published

pubs.volume

11

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