Articles | Volume 24, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-1641-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-1641-2024
Research article
 | 
06 Feb 2024
Research article |  | 06 Feb 2024

Quantifying the contribution of atmospheric circulation to precipitation variability and changes in the US Great Plains and southwest using self-organizing map–analogue

Yizhou Zhuang and Rong Fu

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Cited articles

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Christidis, N. and Stott, P. A.: Changes in the geopotential height at 500 hPa under the influence of external climatic forcings, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 10798–10806, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015gl066669, 2015. 
Ciancarelli, B., Castro, C. L., Woodhouse, C., Dominguez, F., Chang, H. I., Carrillo, C., and Griffin, D.: Dominant patterns of US warm season precipitation variability in a fine resolution observational record, with focus on the southwest, Int. J. Climatol., 34, 687–707, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3716, 2014. 
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Short summary
This study investigated how atmospheric circulation affects precipitation variability and changes in the US Great Plains (GP) and southwest (SW). By developing a new method called self organizing map–analogue, we found that circulation significantly influences short-term precipitation variability, accounting for 54 %–61 % of the total variance. Furthermore, circulation contributes considerably to the multi-decadal changes in precipitation and its extremes, especially for the southern GP and SW.
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