Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:14:39.494Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Influence of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation on the climate of the Sierra Nevada, California and Nevada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Larry Benson ,
Braddock Linsley ,
Joe Smoot ,
Scott Mensing ,
Steve Lund ,
Scott Stine  and
Andre Sarna-Wojcicki
Larry Benson
Affiliation:
U.S. Geological Survey, 3215 Marine Street, Boulder, CO 80303-1066, USA
Braddock Linsley
Affiliation:
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, State University of New York, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222-0001, USA
Joe Smoot
Affiliation:
U.S. Geological Survey, MS 955, Reston, VA 22090, USA
Scott Mensing
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA
Steve Lund
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
Scott Stine
Affiliation:
California State University, Hayward, CA 94542, USA
Andre Sarna-Wojcicki
Affiliation:
U.S. Geological Survey, MS 975, Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mono Lake sediments have recorded five major oscillations in the hydrologic balance between A.D. 1700 and 1941. These oscillations can be correlated with tree-ring-based oscillations in Sierra Nevada snowpack. Comparison of a tree-ring-based reconstruction of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index (D’Arrigo et al., 2001) with a coral-based reconstruction of Subtropical South Pacific sea-surface temperature (Linsley et al., 2000) indicates a high degree of correlation between the two records during the past 300 yr. This suggests that the PDO has been a pan-Pacific phenomena for at least the past few hundred years. Major oscillations in the hydrologic balance of the Sierra Nevada correspond to changes in the sign of the PDO with extreme droughts occurring during PDO maxima. Four droughts centered on A.D. 1710, 1770, 1850, and 1930 indicate PDO-related drought reoccurrence intervals ranging from 60 to 80 yr.

Keywords

PDOPacific Decadal OscillationMono LakeSierra Nevada
Type
Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , March 2003 , pp. 151 - 159
Copyright
Elsevier Science (USA)

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Benson, L.V., Burdett, J.W., Kashgarian, M., Lund, S.P., Phillips, F.M., and Rye, R.O. Climatic and hydrologic oscillations in the Owens Lake basin and adjacent Sierra Nevada, California. Science 274, (1996). 746 749.Google Scholar
Benson, L.V., Kashgarian, M., Rye, R.O., Lund, S.P., Paillet, F.L., Smoot, J., Kester, C., Mensing, S., Meko, D., and Lindstrom, S. Holocene multidecadal and multicentennial droughts affecting northern California and Nevada. Quaternary Science Reviews 21, (2002). 659 682.Google Scholar
Benson, L.V., Lund, S.P., Burdett, J.W., Kashgarian, M., Rose, T.P., Smoot, J., and Schwartz, M.D. Correlation of late-Pleistocene lake-level oscillations in Mono Lake, California, with North Atlantic climate events. Quaternary Research 49, (1998). 1 10.Google Scholar
Benson, L.V., and Paillet, F.L. HIBAL. a hydrologic-isotopic-balance model for application to paleolake systems. Quaternary Science Reviews, 21, (2002). 1521 1539.Google Scholar
Biondi, F., Gershunov, A., and Cayan, D.R. North Pacific decadal climate variability since 1661. Journal of Climate 14, (2001). 5 10.Google Scholar
Cayan, D.R. Interannual climate variability and snowpack in the western United States. Journal of Climate 9, (1996). 928 948.Google Scholar
Chao, Y., Ghil, M., and McWilliams, J.C. Pacific interdecadal variability in this century’s sea surface temperatures. Geophysical Review Letters 27, (2000). 2261 2264.Google Scholar
D’Arrigo, Villalba, R., and Wiles, G. Tree-ring estimates of Pacific decadal climate variability. Climate Dynamics 18, (2001). 219 224.Google Scholar
Davis, O.K. Pollen Analysis of a late-glacial and Holocene sediment core from Mono Lake, Mono County, California. Quaternary Research 52, (1999). 243 249.Google Scholar
Fritts, H.C. “Reconstructing Large-Scale Climatic Patterns from Tree-Ring Data”. (1991). University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Galat, D.L., and Jacobsen, R.L. Recurrent aragonite precipitation in saline-alkaline Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Archiv fur Hydrobiologie 105, (1985). 137 159.Google Scholar
Gedalof, Z., and Smith, D.J. Interdecadal climate variability and regime-scale shifts in Pacific North America. Geophysical Research Letters 28, (2001). 1515 1518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graumlichf, L.J. A 1000-year record of temperature and precipitation in the Sierra Nevada. Quaternary Research 39, (1993). 249 255.Google Scholar
Harding, S.T. (1965). Recent variations in the water supply of the western Great Basin, in: “Water Resources Center Archives Series Report No. 16”, University of California, pp. 226Google Scholar
Jellison, R. Organic matter accumulation in sediments of hypersaline Mono Lake during a period of changing salinity. Limnology, Oceanography 41, (1996). 1539 1544.Google Scholar
Jellison, R., and Melack, J.M. Meromixis in hypersaline Mono Lake, California. 1. Stratification and vertical mixing during the onset, persistence, and breakdown of meromixis. Limnology, Oceanography 38, (1993). 1008 1019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, H., Ku, T., Stott, L.D., and Anderson, R.F. Stable isotope studies on Mono Lake (California). 1. δ18O in lake sediments as proxy for climatic change during the last 150 years. Limnology, Oceanography 42, (1997). 230 238.Google Scholar
Linsley, B.K., Wellington, G.M., and Schrag, D.P. Decadal sea surface temperature variability in the Subtropical South Pacific from 1726 to 1997 A.D. Science 290, (2000). 1145 1148.Google Scholar
Mann, M.E., Park, J., and Bradley, R.S. Global interdecadal and centuryscale climate oscillations during the past five centuries. Nature 378, (1995). 266 270.Google Scholar
Mantua, N.J., Hare, S.R., Zhang, Y., Wallace, J.M., and Francis, R.C. A Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon production. Bulletin of American Meteorological Society 78, (1997). 1069 1079.Google Scholar
Mantua, N.J., and Hare, S.R. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Journal of Oceanography 58, (2002). 35 44.Google Scholar
McCabe, G.J., and Dettinger, M.D. Decadal variations in the strength of ENSO teleconnections with precipitation in the western United States. International Journal of Climatology 19, (1999). 1399 1410.Google Scholar
Meko, D.M., Therrell, M.D., Baisan, C.H., and Hughes, M.K. Sacramento River flow reconstructed to A.D. 869 from tree rings. Journal American Water Resources Association 37, (2001). 1029 1040.Google Scholar
Minobe, S. A 50–70 year climatic oscillation over the North Pacific and North America. Geophysical Review Letters 24, (1997). 683 686.Google Scholar
Minobe, S. Resonance in bidecadal and pentadecadal climate oscillations over the North Pacific. role in climatic regime shifts. Geophysical Review Letters 26, (1999). 855 858.Google Scholar
Minobe, S. Spatio-temporal structure of the pentadecadal variability over the North Pacific. Progress in Oceanography 47, (2000). 381 408.Google Scholar
Newton, M. Holocene fluctuations of Mono Lake, California. the sedimentary record. Society for Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Society for Sedimentary Geology Special Publication 50, (1994). 143 157.Google Scholar
O’Neil, J.R., Clayton, R.N., and Mayeda, T.K. Oxygen isotope fractionation in divalent metal carbonates. Journal of Chemical Physics 50, (1969). 5547 5558.Google Scholar
Oremland, R.S., Miller, L.G., and Whiticar, M.J. Sources and fluxes of natural gases from Mono Lake, California. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 51, (1987). 2915 2929.Google Scholar
Redmond, K.T., and Koch, R.W. Surface climate and streamflow variability in the western United States and their relationship to large-scale circulation indices. Water Resources Research 27, (1991). 2381 2399.Google Scholar
Russell, I.C., (1889). Quaternary History of the Mono Valley. in: “Eighth Annual Report of the U.S. Geological Survey”, California., pp. 267–394.Google Scholar
Salinger, M.J., Renwick, J.A., and Mullan, A.B. Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation and South Pacific Climate. International Journal of Climate 21, (2001). 105 1721.Google Scholar
Sieh, K., and Bursik, M. Most recent eruption of the Mono Craters, eastern central California. Journal of Geophysical Research 91, (1986). 12539 12571.Google Scholar
Stine, S., (1987). “Mono Lake: The Past 4000 Years”. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Stine, S. Late Holocene fluctuations of Mono Lake, eastern California. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 78, (1990). 333 381.Google Scholar
Stuiver, M., Reimer, P.J., and Braziunas, T.F. High-precision radiocarbon age calibration for terrestrial and marine samples. Radiocarbon 40, (1998). 1127 1151.Google Scholar
Tarutani, T., Clayton, R.N., and Mayeda, T.K. The effects of polymorphism and magnesium substitution on oxygen isotope fractionation between calcium carbonate and water. Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta 33, (1969). 987 996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vorster, P.T., (1985). A water balance forecast model for Mono Lake, California.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Region 5. Earth Resources Monograph 10, Google Scholar
Wood, S.H. Distribution, correlation, and radiocarbon dating of late Holocene tephra, Mono and Inyo craters, eastern California. Geological Society of America Bulletin 88, (1977). 89 95.Google Scholar