Statistical Associations Between Large Scale Climate Oscillations and Mesoscale Surface Meteorological Variability in the Apalachicola Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin

• Other Authors: Stevens, Kelly (authoraut), Ruscher, Paul (professor directing thesis), Ahlquist, Jon E. (committee member), Fuelberg, Henry (committee member), Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution)
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Tallahassee, Florida: Florida State University 2008
• Subjects: Meteorology; Pacific; Soi; Flint; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu%3A176070/datastream/TN/view/Statistical%20Associations%20Between%20Large%20Scale%20Climate%20Oscillations%20and%20Mesoscale%20Surface%20Meteorological%20Variability%20in%20the%20Apalachicola%20Chattahoochee-Flint%20River%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20Basin.jpg

The "water wars" of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin are fueled largely by historic and current droughts in the southeastern United States. In attempts to describe climatological circumstances that could lead to low flows in the ACF, this study examines relationships between some available surface climatological variables connected to evapotranspiration and four climatic oscillations using canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The surface meteorological variables for the dependent data set include monthly values of maximum and minimum temperature, as well as precipitation, extracted from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) data sets for four climate divisions in the ACF. The precipitation data are used to compute standardized precipitation index (SPI) values for three, six, twelve, and twenty-four month periods (SPI3, SPI6, SPI12, SPI24) for 1901-2000. The oscillations chosen based upon their previously researched associations to climate patterns in the southeastern United States include the global scale Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). We apply analysis thresholds to the canonical loadings and cross loadings for the canonical roots extracted at the 95% significance level to display the relational results for two separate tests conducted using CCA. The dependent data set for one test consists of the temperature data and SPI6, while the independent data set consists of all the indices for four seasons, allowing for time-lagged and concurrent relationship discoveries. In this test, the standardized temperature data account for much of the variance explained for the CCA-derived concocted variate, with the strongest canonical relationships occurring during the winter season (DJF). Precipitation appears in the wetter spring (MAM) and summer (JJA) season with an indirect relationship to SOI (spring) and ...