Abstract
In the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, agricultural production depends on winter and spring precipitation. There is large interannual variability related to the teleconnection between the regional hydroclimate and El Niño and La Niña in the Tropical Pacific. A modeling experiment was conducted to simulate climatic and hydrological parameters in the Canadian Prairie region during strong El Niño and La Niña events of the last decade in 2015–2016 and 2010–2011, respectively. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model was employed to perform two sets of sensitivity experiments with a nested domain at 10 km resolution using the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis (ERA) interim data as the lateral boundary forcing. Analysis of the hourly model output provides a detailed simulation of the drier winter, with less soil moisture in the following spring, during the 2015–2016 El Niño and a wet winter during the La Niña of 2010–2011. The high-resolution WRF simulation of these recent weather events agrees well with observations from weather stations and water gauges. Therefore, we were able to take advantage of the WRF model to simulate recent weather with high spatial and temporal resolution and thus study the changes in hydrometeorological parameters across the Prairie during the two extreme hydrological events of the last decade.
Highlights
The Canadian Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are known for their extreme seasonal climate and large interannual variability of hydrometeorological parameters [1,2].Precipitation exhibits the largest spatial and temporal variability [3,4]
The major drivers of the interannual variability are the teleconnections with various large-scale climate patterns, especially El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) [5,6,7,8]
Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the tropical Pacific during the two phases of ENSO (El Niño/La Niña) affect North American mid-latitude weather through modulation of atmospheric circulation
Summary
The Canadian Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are known for their extreme seasonal climate and large interannual variability of hydrometeorological parameters [1,2].Precipitation exhibits the largest spatial and temporal variability [3,4]. The major drivers of the interannual variability are the teleconnections with various large-scale climate patterns, especially El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) [5,6,7,8]. Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the tropical Pacific during the two phases of ENSO (El Niño/La Niña) affect North American mid-latitude weather through modulation of atmospheric circulation. The Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) is an index of SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific commonly used to estimate the intensity of the phases of ENSO. The ONI is calculated by averaging sea surface temperature anomalies in an area of the east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean (5◦ S to 5◦ N; 170◦ W to 120◦ W). An ONI of +0.5 or higher indicates El Niño conditions when the east-central tropical Pacific is significantly warmer than normal.
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