Investigating the Response of the Mississippi River System to Climate Change Using Simulations and Observations of the Last Millennium
Abstract
The Mississippi River is an economic artery of the United States, and flooding along its course is a perennial threat to trade, agriculture, industry, and communities. Records of flooding from proxies held in sediment cores and tree rings are critical for extending hydrologic records in the basin, but these paleoflood data provide a limited picture of hydroclimatic variability and change over time. The Community Earth System Model Last Millennium Ensemble (CESM-LME) compliments these proxy records by providing fully coupled output from a state-of-the-art earth system model over the period 850-2005 CE under full forcing and single forcing scenarios. Here, we use the CESM-LME simulations to understand the behavior of the Mississippi River basin over the last millennium, including the regionally warm and dry Medieval era (ca. 1000-1200 CE). We compare observations and reanalysis datasets to CESM-LME output to validate variables most relevant to the hydroclimatology of the Mississippi River basin, including river discharge, runoff, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and snowmelt. We then evaluate changes in hydroclimatology across different time periods and scenarios for the major subbasins of the Mississippi, and investigate potential drivers of those changes. Together, these data allow us to understand the response of the Mississippi River and its tributaries to changes in climate, and evaluate the suitability of using CESM for projections of river flow for the next century.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFMPP55C0676O