Abstract
Drought variability is associated with global oceanic and atmospheric teleconnections driven by, among others, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Climate teleconnections with a region’s rainfall, with drought and flooding implications, should be part of short- and long-term water management planning and operations. In this study, the link between drought and climatic drivers was assessed by using historical data from 110 years of regional rainfall in southern Florida and the Everglades. The objective was to evaluate historical drought and its link with global oceanic and atmospheric teleconnections. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) assesses regional historical drought in 3-, 6-, 12-, 24-, 36-, 48-, and 60-month periods. Each of the SPIs was used to analyze the association of different magnitudes of drought with ENSO, AMO, and PDO. Historical drought evaluated in different time windows indicated that there is a wet and dry cycle in the regional hydrology, where the area is currently in the wet phase of the fluctuation since 1995 with some drought years in between. Regional historical rainfall anomaly and drought index relationships with each driver and combination of drivers were statistically evaluated. The impact of ENSO fluctuation is limited to short-period rainfall variability, whereas long-period influence is from AMO and PDO.
Highlights
Ocean–atmosphere interactions are known for regulating global energy flow that influences rainfall amounts and distribution on a regional scale [1,2,3]
The plots of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) show the coincidence of residual rainfall pattern with the ocean–atmosphere interaction modes
The evaluation of the correspondence between dry season and annual rainfall with ENSO, AMO, and PDO indicated that ENSO fluctuations have a direct relation to short-term rainfall variability in southern Florida
Summary
Ocean–atmosphere interactions are known for regulating global energy flow that influences rainfall amounts and distribution on a regional scale [1,2,3]. The link between these drivers, rainfall pattern, and general hydroclimate variability has been a focus of several studies on a regional scale [2,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. In a study of precipitation and climate teleconnections in the Greater Everglades and South Florida, it was reported that the dry season is correlated to ENSO and that AMO influences wet season rainfall [14]. A study using historical water clarity and climate teleconnections in Lake Annie in Central Florida reported
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