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Tropical cyclones (TCs) are an important source of precipitation for much of the eastern United States. However, our understanding of the spatiotemporal variability of tropical cyclone precipitation (TCP) and the connections to large-scale atmospheric circulation is limited by irregularly distributed rain gauges and short records of satellite measurements. To address this, we developed a new gridded (0.25° × 0.25°) publicly available dataset of TCP (1948–2015; Tropical Cyclone Precipitation Dataset, or TCPDat) using TC tracks to identify TCP within an existing gridded precipitation dataset. TCPDat was used to characterize total June–November TCP and percentage contribution to total June–November precipitation. TCP totals and contributions had maxima on the Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas coasts, substantially decreasing farther inland at rates of approximately 6.2–6.7 mm km−1. Few statistically significant trends were discovered in either TCP totals or percentage contribution. TCP is positively related to an index of the position and strength of the western flank of the North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH), with the strongest correlations concentrated in the southeastern United States. Weaker inverse correlations between TCP and El Niño–Southern Oscillation are seen throughout the study site. Ultimately, spatial variations of TCP are more closely linked to variations in the NASH flank position or strength than to the ENSO index. The TCP dataset developed in this study is an important step in understanding hurricane–climate interactions and the impacts of TCs on communities, water resources, and ecosystems in the eastern United States.

Global climate models (GCMs) have biases when simulating historical climate conditions, which in turn have implications for estimating the hydrological impacts of climate change. This study examines the differences in projected changes of aridity [defined as the ratio of precipitation (P) over potential evapotranspiration (PET), or P/PET] and the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) between raw and bias-corrected GCM output for the continental United States (CONUS). For historical simulations (1950–79) the raw GCM ensemble median has a positive precipitation bias (+24%) and negative PET bias (−7%) compared to the bias-corrected output when averaged over CONUS with the most acute biases over the interior western United States. While both raw and bias-corrected GCM ensembles project more aridity (lower P/PET) for CONUS in the late twenty-first century (2070–99), relative enhancements in aridity were found for bias-corrected data compared to the raw GCM ensemble owing to positive precipitation and negative PET biases in the raw GCM ensemble. However, the bias-corrected GCM ensemble projects less acute decreases in summer PDSI for the southwestern United States compared to the raw GCM ensemble (from 1 to 2 PDSI units higher), stemming from biases in precipitation amount and seasonality in the raw GCM ensemble. Compared to the raw GCM ensemble, bias-corrected GCM inputs not only correct for systematic errors but also can produce high-resolution projections that are useful for impact analyses. Therefore, changes in hydroclimate metrics often appear considerably different in bias-corrected output compared to raw GCM output.

Gridding of daily precipitation data alleviates many of the limitations of data that are derived from point observations, such as problems associated with missing data and the lack of spatial coverage. As a result, gridded precipitation data can be valuable for applied climatological research and monitoring, but they too have limitations. To understand the limitations of gridded data more fully (especially when they are used as surrogates for station data), annual precipitation total, rain-day frequency, and annual maxima are calculated and compared for five Midwestern grid points from the Climate Prediction Center’s Unified Rain Gauge Dataset (URD) and those of its nearest (rain gauge) station. To further examine differences between the two datasets, return periods of daily precipitation were calculated over a region encompassing Illinois and Indiana. These analyses reveal that the gridding process used to create the URD produced nearly the same annual totals as the rain gauge data; however, the gridding significantly increased the frequency of low-precipitation events while greatly reducing the frequency of heavy-precipitation events. Extreme precipitation values also were greatly reduced in the gridded precipitation data. While smoothing nearly always occurs when data are gridded, the gridding of discrete variables such as daily precipitation can produce datasets with statistical characteristics that are very different from those of the original observations.

A new and efficient method for identifying “rogue” air temperature stations—locations with unusually large air temperature trends—is presented. Instrumentation problems and spatially unrepresentative local climates are sometimes more apparent in air temperature extremes, yet can have more subtle impacts on variations in mean air temperature. As a result, using data from over 1300 stations in North America, the tails of daily air temperature frequency distributions were examined for unusual trends. In particular, linear trends in the 5th percentile of daily minimum air temperature during the winter months and the 95th percentile of daily maximum air temperature during the summer were analyzed. Cluster analysis then was used to identify stations that were distinct from other locations. Both single- and average linkage clustering were evaluated. By identifying individual stations along the entire periphery of the percentile trend space, single-linkage clustering appears to produce better results than that of average linkage. Average linkage clustering tends to group together several stations with large trends; however, only a handful of these stations appear distinctly different from the large body of trends toward the center of the percentile trend space. Maps of the rogue stations show that most are in close proximity to numerous other stations that were not grouped into the rogue cluster, making it unlikely that the unusually large temperature trends were due to regional climatic variations. As with all approaches for evaluating data quality, time series plots and station history information also must be inspected to more fully understand inhomogeneous variations in historical climatic data.

Networks of near-surface climate stations often produce samples of air temperature that are spatially uneven and sparse. Spatial samples of air temperature, as a result, affect both the regional depiction of air temperature anomalies and large-scale spatial averages. A resampling procedure is used here to illustrate the general problem of how spatially variable station networks can influence estimates of climate change. As an example, the warm air temperature anomalies that occurred during 1988 are resampled using station networks from other years. During 1988, areas in North America and northern Asia experienced very warm conditions, producing a terrestrially averaged air temperature anomaly of over 0.4{degrees}C. If the 1988 air temperature anomalies were resampled using the 1981 station network, the warm event in northern Asia would not have been detected due to missing air temperatures over northern Russian during 1981. As a result, the 1981 station network would have estimated the 1988 terrestrial air temperature anomaly to be 0.25{degrees}C. Alternatively, the station network of 1988 was biased toward areas that had warm 1988 air temperatures and would estimate the 1988 air temperature anomaly to be 0.52{degrees}C. In addition to problems in estimating the terrestrially averaged air temperature anomaly, regional climatic variability ismore » altered by resampling the 1988 anomalies with other networks. The sampling problems illustrated here also show the importance of having free and open exchanges of data worldwide. National networks of climatic stations are crucially important not only in the analysis of regional climatic variability, but also in the detection of global-scale climatic change.« less