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1. Hailfall in a Possible Future Climate Using a Pseudo–Global Warming Approach: Hail Characteristics and Mesoscale Influences

   https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0181.1  

   Mallinson, Holly ; Lasher-Trapp, Sonia ; Trapp, Jeff ; Woods, Matthew ; Orendorf, Sophie ( January 2024 , Journal of Climate)

   Severe convective storms (SCS) and their associated hazards present significant societal risk. Understanding of how these hazards, such as hailfall, may change due to anthropogenic climate change is in its infancy. Previous methods used to investigate possible changes in SCS and their hail used climate model output and were limited by their coarse spatiotemporal resolution and less detailed representations of hail. This study instead uses an event-level pseudo–global warming (PGW) approach to simulate seven different hailstorms in their historical environments, and again in five different end-of-century PGW environments obtained from the worst-case scenario increases in CO₂of five different CMIP5 members. Changes in large-scale environmental parameters were generally found to be consistent with prior studies, showing mostly increases in CAPE, CIN, and precipitable water, with minor changes in vertical wind shear. Nearly all simulated events had moderately stronger updrafts in the PGW environments. Only cold-season events showed an increase in hail sizes both within the storms and at the surface, whereas warm-season events exhibited a decrease in hail sizes at the surface and aloft. Changes in the event-total hailfall area at the ground also showed a seasonal trend, with increases in cold-season events and decreases in warm-season events. Melting depths increased for all PGW environments, and these increases likely contributed to greater rainfall area for warm-season events, where an increase in smaller hail aloft would be more prone to melting. The differences in PGW simulation hail sizes in cold-season and warm-season events found here are likely related to differences in microphysical processes and warrant future study.

   It is uncertain how severe thunderstorm hazards (such as hail, tornadoes, and damaging winds) may change due to human-induced climate change. Given the significant societal risk these hazards pose, this study seeks to better understand how hailstorms may change in the future. Simulated end-of-century storms in winter months showed larger hail sizes and a larger area of event-total hailfall than in the historical simulations, whereas simulated future storms in spring and summer months showed smaller hail sizes and a reduction in the area where hail fell. An analysis of traditional environmental and storm-scale properties did not reveal a clear distinction between cold-season and warm-season hailstorms, suggesting that changes in small-scale precipitation processes may be responsible.

    

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2. Interaction of wind and cold‐season hydrologic processes on erosion from complex topography following wildfire in sagebrush steppe

   https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.4778  

   Vega, Samantha P. ; Williams, C. Jason ; Brooks, Erin S. ; Pierson, Frederick B. ; Strand, Eva K. ; Robichaud, Peter R. ; Brown, Robert E. ; Seyfried, Mark S. ; Lohse, Kathleen A. ; Glossner, Kayla ; et al ( February 2020 , Earth Surface Processes and Landforms)

   Wildfire is a natural component of sagebrush (Artemisiaspp.) steppe rangelands that induces temporal shifts in plant community physiognomy, ground surface conditions, and erosion rates. Fire alteration of the vegetation structure and ground cover in these ecosystems commonly amplifies soil losses by wind‐ and water‐driven erosion. Much of the fire‐related erosion research for sagebrush steppe has focused on either erosion by wind over gentle terrain or water‐driven erosion under high‐intensity rainfall on complex topography. However, many sagebrush rangelands are geographically positioned in snow‐dominated uplands with complex terrain in which runoff and sediment delivery occur primarily in winter months associated with cold‐season hydrology. Current understanding is limited regarding fire effects on the interaction of wind‐ and cold‐season hydrologic‐driven erosion processes for these ecosystems. In this study, we evaluated fire impacts on vegetation, ground cover, soils, and erosion across spatial scales at a snow‐dominated mountainous sagebrush site over a 2‐year period post‐fire. Vegetation, ground cover, and soil conditions were assessed at various plot scales (8 m²to 3.42 ha) through standard field measures. Erosion was quantified through a network of silt fences (n= 24) spanning hillslope and side channel or swale areas, ranging from 0.003 to 3.42 ha in size. Sediment delivery at the watershed scale (129 ha) was assessed by suspended sediment samples of streamflow through a drop‐box v‐notch weir. Wildfire consumed nearly all above‐ground live vegetation at the site and resulted in more than 60% bare ground (bare soil, ash, and rock) in the immediate post‐fire period. Widespread wind‐driven sediment loading of swales was observed over the first month post‐fire and extensive snow drifts were formed in these swales each winter season during the study. In the first year, sediment yields from north‐ and south‐facing aspects averaged 0.99–8.62 t ha⁻¹at the short‐hillslope scale (~0.004 ha), 0.02–1.65 t ha⁻¹at the long‐hillslope scale (0.02–0.46 ha), and 0.24–0.71 t ha⁻¹at the swale scale (0.65–3.42 ha), and watershed scale sediment yield was 2.47 t ha⁻¹. By the second year post fire, foliar cover exceeded 120% across the site, but bare ground remained more than 60%. Sediment yield in the second year was greatly reduced across short‐ to long‐hillslope scales (0.02–0.04 t ha⁻¹), but was similar to first‐year measures for swale plots (0.24–0.61 t ha⁻¹) and at the watershed scale (3.05 t ha⁻¹). Nearly all the sediment collected across all spatial scales was delivered during runoff events associated with cold‐season hydrologic processes, including rain‐on‐snow, rain‐on‐frozen soils, and snowmelt runoff. Approximately 85–99% of annual sediment collected across all silt fence plots each year was from swales. The high levels of sediment delivered across hillslope to watershed scales in this study are attributed to observed preferential loading of fine sediments into swale channels by aeolian processes in the immediate post‐fire period and subsequent flushing of these sediments by runoff from cold‐season hydrologic processes. Our results suggest that the interaction of aeolian and cold‐season hydrologic‐driven erosion processes is an important component for consideration in post‐fire erosion assessment and prediction and can have profound implications for soil loss from these ecosystems. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

    

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3. The Contribution of Lake-Effect Snow to Annual Snowfall Totals in the Vicinity of Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Ontario

   https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2022.782910  

   Jones, Erin A. ; Lang, Carrie E. ; Laird, Neil F. ( March 2022 , Frontiers in Water)

   In the Great Lakes region, total cold-season snowfall consists of contributions from both lake-effect systems (LES) and non-LES snow events. To enhance understanding of the regional hydroclimatology, this research examined these separate contributions with a focus on the cold seasons (October–March) of 2009/2010, a time period with the number of LES days substantially less than the mean, and 2012/2013, a time period with the number of LES days notably greater than the mean, for the regions surrounding Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Ontario. In general, LES snowfall exhibited a maximum contribution in near-shoreline areas surrounding each lake while non-LES snowfall tended to provide a more widespread distribution throughout the entire study regions with maxima often located in regions of elevated terrain. The percent contribution for LES snowfall to the seasonal snowfall varied spatially near each lake with localized maxima and ranged in magnitudes from 10% to over 70%. Although total LES snowfall amounts tended to be greater during the cold season with the larger number of LES days, the percent of LES snowfall contributing to the total cold-season snowfall was not directly dependent on the number of LES days. The LES snowfall contributions to seasonal totals were found to be generally larger for Lakes Erie and Ontario during the cold season with a greater number of LES days; however, LES contributions were similar or smaller for areas in the vicinity of Lake Michigan during the cold season with a smaller number of LES days. 

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4. An Investigation of Cold-Season Short-Wave Troughs in the Great Lakes Region and Their Concurrence with Lake-Effect Clouds

   https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-18-0177.1  

   Metz, Nicholas D. ; Bruick, Zachary S. ; Capute, Peyton K. ; Neureuter, Molly M. ; Ott, Emily W. ; Sessa, Michael F. ( March 2019 , Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology)

   The downwind shores of the Laurentian Great Lakes region often receive prolific amounts of lake-effect snowfall during the cold season (October–March). The location and intensity of this snowfall can be influenced by upper-tropospheric features such as short-wave troughs. A 7-yr cold-season climatology of 500-hPa short-wave troughs was developed for the Great Lakes region. A total of 607 short-wave troughs were identified, with an average of approximately 87 short waves per cold season. Five classes of short-wave troughs were identified on the basis of their movement through the Great Lakes region. This short-wave trough dataset was subsequently compared with the lake-effect cloud-band climatology created by N. F. Laird et al. in 2017 to determine how frequently short-wave troughs occurred concurrently with lake-effect cloud bands. Of the 607 short-wave troughs identified, 380 were concurrent with lake-effect clouds. Over 65% of these 380 short-wave troughs occurred with a lake-effect cloud band on at least four of the five Great Lakes. Short-wave troughs that rotated around the base of a long-wave trough were found to have the highest frequency of concurrence. In general, concurrence was most likely during the middle cold-season months. Further, Lake Michigan featured the highest number of concurrent events, and Lake Erie featured the fewest. It is evident that short-wave troughs are a ubiquitous feature near the Great Lakes during the cold season and have the potential to impart substantial impacts on lake-effect snowbands.

    

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5. Using atmospheric observations to quantify annual biogenic carbon dioxide fluxes on the Alaska North Slope

   https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-5953-2022  

   Schiferl, Luke D. ; Watts, Jennifer D. ; Larson, Erik J. ; Arndt, Kyle A. ; Biraud, Sébastien C. ; Euskirchen, Eugénie S. ; Goodrich, Jordan P. ; Henderson, John M. ; Kalhori, Aram ; McKain, Kathryn ; et al ( January 2022 , Biogeosciences)

   Abstract. The continued warming of the Arctic could release vast stores of carbon into the atmosphere from high-latitude ecosystems, especially from thawingpermafrost. Increasing uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by vegetation during longer growing seasons may partially offset such release of carbon. However, evidence of significant net annual release of carbon from site-level observations and model simulations across tundra ecosystems has been inconclusive. To address this knowledge gap, we combined top-down observations of atmospheric CO2 concentration enhancements from aircraft and a tall tower, which integrate ecosystem exchange over large regions, with bottom-up observed CO2 fluxes from tundraenvironments and found that the Alaska North Slope is not a consistent net source nor net sink of CO2 to the atmosphere (ranging from −6 to+6 Tg C yr−1 for 2012–2017). Our analysis suggests that significant biogenic CO2 fluxes from unfrozen terrestrial soils, and likely inland waters, during the early cold season (September–December) are major factors in determining the net annual carbon balance of the North Slope, implying strong sensitivity to the rapidly warming freeze-up period. At the regional level, we find no evidence of the previously reported large late-cold-season (January–April) CO2 emissions to the atmosphere during the study period. Despite the importance of the cold-season CO2 emissions to the annual total, the interannual variability in the net CO2 flux is driven by the variability in growing season fluxes. During the growing season, the regional net CO2 flux is also highly sensitive to the distribution of tundra vegetation types throughout the North Slope. This study shows that quantification and characterization of year-round CO2 fluxes from the heterogeneous terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the Arctic using both site-level and atmospheric observations are important to accurately project the Earth system response to future warming. 

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