Archived Highlights

A strong cold front blew through eastern Washington in late February and KLEW (CBS-Lewiston) asked me a few questions regarding the wind storm

I developed a methodology to create high-resolution surface meteorological conditions that include temperature, precipitation, humidity, winds and downward shortwave radiation at 4-km for the continental United States 1979-2010 by blending NLDAS-2 high-temporal resolution data with the high-spatial resolution climate dataset of PRISM.

Additional information here

Abatzoglou, J. T. (2011), Development of gridded surface meteorological data for ecological applications and modelling. International Journal of Climatology. doi: 10.1002/joc.3413

Multiple direct and indirect threats to invasive annual grasses expansion in western US rangelands amplified in a changing climate?

Abatzoglou JT, Kolden CA, 2011. Climate Change in Western US Deserts: Potential for Increased Wildfire and Invasive Annual Grasses. Rangeland Ecology & Management: September 2011, Vol. 64, No. 5, pp. 471-478.

New paper examining whether climate or weather had a bigger influence on area burned by wildfires in the Alaskan boreal forest published in International Journal of Wildland Fire.

Abatzoglou JT, Kolden CA, 2011. Relative Importance of Weather and Climate on Wildfire Growth in Interior Alaska. International Journal of Wildland Fire 20(4) 479-486.

A persistent trough parked over the western US from mid February brought record precipitation to many locales across the northwestern US and a 3-4 delay in spring. KLEW (CBS): Where's Spring?

Output from the novel statistical downscaling method, the Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA) method, is being distributed via Inside Idaho. A companion paper has been accepted to International Journal of Climatology, "A Comparison of Downscaling methods suited for wildfire applications". A short video briefing is forthcomming on the methodology within the spectrum of other statistical downscaling methodologies is provided here.

Dr. Solomon Dobrowski and Shawn Crimmins led a study that I contributed to that examined the hypothesis that vegetation distributions in California moved downhill between the 1930s and 2000s in northern/central California in response to an increase in precipitation and moisture. See publication and press coverage.

Indicators of Climate Change in Idaho. Students in a course taught at the University of Idaho in Fall 2010 put together a summary of climate change indicators for the state of Idaho.

State of the Climate: The 2009-10 year in review and outlook for 2010-11.

Meteorology of the Blow Up of 1910: A reconstruction of the climate and weather stressors that contributed to the large wildfires that burned through much of the Idaho Panhandle and western Montana Aug 20-22 1910

Overview of GCMs and downscaling methods, including the MACA method.

Impacts of Climate Change on Fire Danger in the West We use a new statistical downscaling method (MACA) to project changes in NFDRS fire danger indices across a suite of GCMs for the late 21st century. Results suggest an increased frequency of extreme fire danger class days and an increased likelihood of synchronized extremes Westwide.

A synopsis of the climate of 2008-09 and seasonal outlook pertinent to the state of Idaho for this upcoming winter.

Climate Tracking Tool for Idaho and eastern Washington. A collection of Cooperative Weather Stations from across Idaho and the east-side of Washington State provides monthly time series data for temperature (maximum and minimums) and precipitation. These products are updated each month. Future comprehensive climate summaries will be developed to synthesize climate variability and change.

California's Driest Spring in 114 years: The California Climate Tracker, a climate monitoring tool developed to characterize and track regional climate variability for the state, has shown that the spring (MAM) of 2008 was the driest in history for the state of California as a whole.  Particularly noteworthy is the dryness experienced across the central part of the state including the Central Coast, Bay Area, Sacramento-Delta and the hydrologically important Sierra Nevada, all which ranked as having the driest spring periods on record.  Two consecutive years of subpar preciptiation for the state constitues the driest period since the drought of the late 80's -early 90s, with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaiming drought for the state with water restrictions for all. Explore the California Climate Tracker