Abstract
Drylines are atmospheric boundaries separating dry from moist air that can initiate convection. Potential changes in the location, frequency, and characteristics of drylines in future climates are unknown. This study applies a multi-parametric algorithm to objectively identify and characterize the dryline in North America using convection-permitting regional climate model simulations with 4-km horizontal grid spacing for 13-years under a historical and a pseudo-global warming climate projection by the end of the century. The dryline identification is successfully achieved with a set of standardized algorithm parameters across the lee side of the Rocky Mountains from the Canadian Rockies to the Sierra Madres in Mexico. The dryline is present 27% of the days at 00 UTC between April and September in the current climate, with a mean humidity gradient magnitude of 0.16 g−1 kg−1 km−1. The seasonal cycle of drylines peak around April and May in the southern Plains, and in June and July in the northern Plains. In the future climate, the magnitude and frequency of drylines increase 5% and 13%, correspondingly, with a stronger intensification southward. Future drylines strengthen during their peak intensity in the afternoon in the Southern U.S. and Northeast Mexico. Drylines also show increasing intensities in the morning with future magnitudes that are comparable to peak intensities found in the afternoon in the historical climate. Furthermore, an extension of the seasonality of intense drylines could produce end-of-summer drylines that are as strong as mid-summer drylines in the current climate. This might affect the seasonality and the diurnal cycle of convective activity in future climates, challenging weather forecasting and agricultural planning.
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Data availability
The CONUS simulations are available in the dataset DS612.0 at the Research Data Archive operated by the Computational and information System Lab at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Code availability
The data processing was built using NCL, MATLAB and Python. The scripts can be available upon request to the corresponding author.
Change history
07 July 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05862-1
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant, and the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat of Canada through the Global Water Futures Program, Canada First Research Excellence Fund. We also acknowledge the support from the Water System Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The National Science Foundation sponsors NCAR. This project was performed at the NCAR facilities funded through NSF-Water System Program. We would like to acknowledge high-performance computing support from Yellowstone (ark:/85065/d7wd3xhc) and Cheyenne (2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.5065/D6RX99HX), provided by NCAR’s Computational and Information System Laboratory, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Era-5 from ECMWF 2017 was stored in the Research Data Archive data DS633.0. AJC contributed to this work as part of regular duties at the federally funded NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory.
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This research was supported by the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat of Canada through the Global Water Futures Program, Canada First Research Excellence Fund.
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LS designed the study, process and analyzed the data. LS, AP, AC and SK contributed to guiding the results and discussion. KI and CL performed the CONUS simulations. All coauthors contributed to writing the manuscript.
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On behalf of all authors, Lucia Scaff declare no conflict of interest and no competing interests.
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Scaff, L., Prein, A.F., Li, Y. et al. Dryline characteristics in North America’s historical and future climates. Clim Dyn 57, 2171–2188 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05800-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05800-1