A 1000-year record of winter precipitation from northwestern New Mexico,USA: a reconstruction from tree-rings and its relation to El Niño and the Southern Oscillation

Abstract

A 1000-year reconstruction of winter (cool season) November-May precipitation for northern New Mexico is developed for AD 985-1970 based on six millenium-long tree-ring records from moisture-sensitive coniferous sites in New Mexico and southern Colorado. Two of the most prolonged and severe droughts occurred during the last 100 years: in the AD 1890s-1904 and the AD 1950s-early 1960s. These were exceeded in length and severity only once in the 1000-year reconstructed record, in the late 1500s, and almost equaled in the early 1200s. The five decadal-scale intervals of greatest drought were, in descending order, AD 1577-1598, AD 1955-64, AD 1895-1904, AD 1217-1226, and AD 1778- 1787. The wettest periods were AD 1835-49, AD 1905-28, AD 1429-1440, AD 1609-23, and AD 1487- 98. The most abrupt shift from severe sustained drought to extremely high precipitation occurred in the 1890s to early 1900s. The intensity of this shift is unprecedented over the 1000-year period of the reconstruction. Relatively dry conditions are indicated for part of the 1400-1600s period around the onset of the Little Ice Age, and the reconstruction indicates average conditions during the Medieval Warm Period.

The southwestern US is an area of known teleconnection with the El Nine-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), coinciding with a tendency for wetter conditions to occur during ENSO years (warmer events) and drier conditions during colder events. The chronologies and reconstruction show correspondence with indices of ENSO, including Wright's Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). The years AD 1720, 1484, 1816 and 1941 (interpreted as ENSO-related events in instrumental or historical data) are the four wettest individual years in the reconstruction. Variance spectral analysis of the chronologies and reconstruction reveals significant peaks at approximately 2-7 year, 22 year and 80-100 year. There is potential for modelling the amplitude and frequency of the ENSO signature in the southwestern US over the past 1000 years or more, particularly by integrating tree-ring data from this region with other sources of high-resolution palaeoclimatic information.

Keywords

tree-rings climate E1 Nino Southern Oscillation precipitation New Mexico.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Andrade, E.R. , Jr. and Sellers, W.D. 1988: El Niño and its effect on precipitation in Arizona and western New Mexico. Journal of Climatology 8, 403-10.

Baumgartner, T.R. , Michaelson, J. , Thompson, L.G. , Shen, G.T. , Soutar, A. and Casey, R.E. 1989: The recording of interannual climatic change by high-resolution natural systems: tree-rings, coral bands, glacial ice layers, and marine varves . Geographical Monthly 55, 1-14.

Cane, M.A. and Zebiak, S.E. 1985: A theory of El Nino and the Southern Oscillation. Science 228, 1085-87.

Cook, E.R. and Jacoby, G.C. 1983: Potomac River streamflow since 1730 as reconstructed by tree-rings. Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology 22, 1659-72.

Dean, J.S. 1988: Dendrochronology and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction on the Colorado Plateaus. In Gumerman, G.J. editor, The Anasazi in a changing environment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 119-67.

Dean, J.S. and Robinson, W.J. 1978: Expanded tree-ring chronologies for the southwestern United States. Chronology Series III, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. (58 pp.)

Deser, C. and Wallace, J.M. 1987: El Nino events and their relation to the Southern Oscillation . Journal of Geophysical Research 92, 14, 189-14, 196.

Draper, N. and Smith, H. 1981: Applied regression analysis, 2nd Ed., New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Eddy, J.A. 1976: The Maunder Minimum. Science 192, 1189-1202. Fritts, H.C. 1976: Tree-rings and Climate . New York: Academic Press. Gordon, G.A. and LeDuc, S.K. 1981: Verification statistics for regression models. Paper presented at: Conference on probability and statistics in atmospheric science. American Meteorological Society Monterey, California .

10.

Hsu, C.P.F. and Wallace, J.M. 1976: The global distribution of the annual and semi-annual cycles in precipitation. Monthly Weather Review 104, 1093-1101.

11.

Jenkins, G.M. and Watts, D.G. 1968: Spectral Analysis and its Applications. San Francisco: Holden Day Press.

12.

Karl, T.R. , Metcalf, L.K. , Nicodemus, M.L. and Quayle, R.G. 1983: Historical Climatology Series 6.1. National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina .

13.

Kiladis, G.N. and Diaz, H.F. 1989: Global climatic anomalies associated with extremes of the Southern Oscillation. Journal of Climate 2, 1069-90.

14.

Klein, W.H. and Bloom, H.J. 1987: Specification of monthly precipitation over the United States from the surrounding 700 mb height field. Monthly Weather Review 115, 2118-32.

15.

Kutzbach, J.E. and Guetter, P.J. 1980: On the design of paleoenvironmental data networks for estimating large-scale patterns of climate. Quaternary Research 14, 169-87.

16.

Lamb, H.H. 1977: Climate: past, present and future. II. Climate history and the future. London: Methuen Press.

17.

Lough, J.M. and Fritts, H.C. 1985: The Southern Oscillation and tree-rings: 1600-1961. Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology 24, 952-66.

18.

Lough, J.M. and Fritts, H.C. 1989: Historical aspects of El Nino-Southern Oscillation - information from tree-rings. In Glynn, P.W. editor, Ecological consequences of the 1982-83 El Niño. Elsevier, in press.

19.

Meko, D.M. 1981: Applications of Box-Jenkins methods of time series analysis to the reconstruction of drought from tree-rings. PhD thesis, Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. (149 pp.)

20.

— 1986: A tree-ring perspective on the extreme wetness of the early 1900's in the western United States, p. 27 in 3rd Workshop on Climate Variability of the Eastern North Pacific and Western North America, 25-28, March, 1986 , Pacific Grove, California Water Reservoir Division, US Geological Survcey (abst). (72 pp.)

21.

Meko, D.M. , Stockton, C.W. and Boggess, W.R. 1980: A tree-ring reconstruction of drought in southern California . Water Resources Bulletin 16, 594-600.

22.

Michaelson, J. 1989: Long-period fluctuations in El Nino amplitude and frequency reconstructed from tree-rings. Geophysical Monthly 55, 69-74.

23.

Mitchell, J.M. , Stockton, C.W. and Meko, D.M. 1978: Evidence of a 22-year rhythm in the western United States related to the Hale solar cycle since the seventeenth century. In McCormac, B.M. and Seliga, T.A. editors, Solar-Terrestrial Influences on Weather and Climate, 125-43.

24.

Overpeck, J. and Cole, J. 1990: Role of corals, varved sediments and models in understanding global environmental change. EOS 71 (29), 983.

25.

Rind, D. , Goldberg, R. , Hansen, J. , Rosenzwig, C. and Ruedy, R. 1990: Potential evapotranspiration and the likelihood of future drought. Journal of Geophysical Research 95, 9983-10 004.

26.

Ropelowski, C.F. and Halpert, M.S. 1986: North American precipitation and temperature patterns associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Monthly Weather Review 114, 2352-62.

27.

Rose, M.R. , Dean, J.S. and Robinson, W.J. 1981: The past climate of Arroyo Hondo New Mexico reconstructed from tree-rings. Arroyo Hondo Arch. Series v. 4, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe. (114 pp.)

28.

Rose, M.R. , Dean, J.S. and Robinson, W.J. 1982: Dendroclimatic reconstruction for the southeastern Colorado Plateau, unpublished manuscript, Laboratory of Tree-ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson.

29.

Quinn, W.H. 1990: A preliminary record of Southern Oscillation-related activity extending about 1368 years into the past. Abstract, Workshop of Palaeoclimatic Aspects of El Niño/Southern Oscillation. May 2-4, 1990. Boulder, Colorado: National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA, and Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder.

30.

Quinn, W.H. and Neal, V.T. 1990: The ENSO as a climatic forcing factor. In Bradley, R.S. and Jones, P.D. Climate since AD 1500, London: Unwin-Hyman.

31.

Quinn, W.H. , Neal, V.T. and Antunez de Mayolo, S.E. 1987: El Niño occurrences over the past four and a half centuries. Journal of Geophysical Research 92, 14449-61.

32.

Rose, M.R. , Dean, J.S. and Robinson, W.J. 1981: The past climate of Arroyo Hondo New Mexico reconstructed from tree rings. Arroyo Hondo Archaeological Series, Volume 4. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, p. 109. (ISBN 0-933452-05-5).

33.

Rose, M.R. , Robinson, W.J. and Dean, J.S. 1982: Dendroclimatic reconstruction for the southeastern Colorado Plateau. Unpublished manuscript on file at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

34.

Schlesinger, M.E. and Mitchell, J.F.B. 1985: Model projections of the equilibrium climatic response to increased carbon dioxide. In US DOE Report, DOE/ER-0237, pp. 81-148.

35.

Stockton, C.W. 1971: The feasibility of augmenting hydrologic records using tree-ring data. Dissertation, the University of Arizona .

36.

Stockton, C.W. and Jacoby, G.C. 1976: Long-term surface-water supply and streamflow trends in the Upper Colorado River Basin, Lake Powell Research Project Bulletin 18, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, California. (70 pp.)

37.

Swetnam, T.W. and Betancourt, J.L. 1990: Fire-Southern Oscillation relations in the southwestern United States. Science 249, 1017-20. US Water Resources Council 1978: The nation's water resources 1975-2000, Second National Water Assessment by the US Water Resources Council, Vol. 1, Summary. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

38.

Wright, P.B. 1989: Homogenized long-period Southern Oscillation indices. Journal of Climatology 9, 33-54.