Past, Present, and Future

Over the past decade, we have been studying impacts of decadal climate variability (DCV) phenomena — the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the tropical Atlantic sea-surface temperature gradient (TAG) variability, and the West Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP) temperature variability on the Missouri River Basin (MRB) — using statistical and other analyses, and corroborations by other published literature Mehta, (2017).

We are now using results and insights from these studies to provide a perspective on past associations between DCV phenomena and dry and wet epochs, river flows, and crop productions.  The present states of these phenomena, hydro-meteorology, dryness-wetness, and vegetation cover are also shown.  From extensive analyses of past DCV and dryness-wetness data, and from DCV hindcasts/forecasts under the CMIP5 project by the MIROC5 Earth System Model (Mehta et al., 2018), we are developing DCV and associated impacts prediction techniques.  Preliminary results from these prediction efforts in the form of short-term (one to four seasons), medium-term (one to two years), and long-term (three to five years) future outlooks of DCV phenomena and their potential impacts are also shown.  The future outlooks so far contain dryness-wetness (compared to multi-decades averages) information, but we are working on providing magnitude information also.  We are also working on developing and providing qualitative and quantitative outlooks on river flows, crop productions, and other impacts sectors.

Each section (Past, Present, and Future) contains brief information about the data and techniques used to generate the maps and time series shown.  Please contact us with any questions or comments.