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Climate History Leading up to 2002 Drought. Colorado Climate Center Roger Pielke, Sr, Director and Nolan Doesken, Research Associate Prepared by Odie Bliss & Tara Green http://climate.atmos.colostate.edu. Climate Prediction. Is there skill? What spatial scales are required?
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Climate History Leading up to 2002 Drought Colorado Climate Center Roger Pielke, Sr, Director and Nolan Doesken, Research Associate Prepared by Odie Bliss & Tara Green http://climate.atmos.colostate.edu
Climate Prediction • Is there skill? • What spatial scales are required? • What is climate?
COLORADO NEEDS • What would be the impact today of historical droughts? • What would be the impact today of paleo-droughts? • What if the 2001-2002 dry, warm weather reoccurred for 2002-2003? • How can we make Colorado more resilient to droughts? • What are the definitions of the multi-dimensional character of droughts.
EXAMPLES OF DROUGHTS • Snow does not fall in the mountains until late January • It is dry in April-July, but soaking rains occur in eastern Colorado in August • The weather of 2001-2002 repeats for the next five years • Colorado’s mountains have 90% of average snow for the next 20 years.
Vulnerability Assessment • A vulnerability assessment of risk to climate and other environmental stress is, therefore, more appropriate as guides to Policy Makers, than trying to predict only a subset of possible future climate conditions.
Websites • Pielke Research Group Web site • http://blue.atmos.colostate.edu • Colorado Climate Center Web site • http://climate.atmos.colostate.edu
Image from Allen and Breshears, 1998, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 95, pp. 14839-14842
Total Precipitation AnalysisSeptember 2001 – August 2002 Ranking by Station
Figure 2. Geographic anomalies in temperature trends in eastern Colorado. from Pielke et al., 2002, "Problems in evaluating regional and local trends in temperature: An example from Eastern Colorado USA", Int. J. Climatol., 22, 421-434.
Water Year 2002(Oct. 2001-Sept. 2002) Precipitation % of Average