Rio Grande 500 Year Riverflow and Precipitation Reconstructions Woodhouse, C.A.; Meko, D.M.; Griffin, D.; Castro, C.L. Woodhouse, C.A. Meko, D.M. Griffin, D. Castro, C.L. Monsoon Precipitation Reconstruction Streamflow Reconstruction hydrology earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (age,null,null,year Common Era,null,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (streamflow,null,null,acre foot,Oct-Sep,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/instrumental (precipitation,null,null,millimeter,Jun-Jul,instrumental,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/instrumental (streamflow,null,null,cubic meter per second,Oct-Sep,instrumental,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (precipitation,null,null,millimeter,Jun-Jul,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/instrumental (streamflow,null,null,acre foot,Oct-Sep,instrumental,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (streamflow,null,null,cubic meter per second,Oct-Sep,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/reconstructions earth science/paleoclimate/reconstructions (Lower Rio Grande Region>LATITUDE >LONGITUDE ) (Upper Rio Grande USGS 08220000>LATITUDE 37.6886>LONGITUDE -106.4599) Agriculture and ranching in semiarid regions often rely on local precipitation during the growing season as well as streamflow from runoff in distant headwaters. Where snowpack and reservoir storage are important, this pattern of reliance leads to vulnerability to multiseason drought. The lower Rio Grande basin in New Mexico, used as a case study here, has experienced drought conditions over the past 12 years characterized both by low local summer monsoon precipitation and by reduced availability of surface water supplies from the upper Rio Grande. To place this drought in a long-term context, we evaluate the covariability of local warm-season and remote cool-season hydroclimate over both the modern period and past centuries. We draw on a recently developed network of tree-ring data that allows an assessment of preinstrumental warm-season variations in precipitation over the southwest. Both instrumental and paleoclimatic data suggest that low runoff followed by a dry monsoon is not unusual, although over the full reconstruction period (1659-2008), years with wet or dry conditions shared in both seasons do not occur significantly more often than unshared conditions. Low flows followed by dry monsoon conditions were most persistent in the 1770s and 1780s; other notable periods of shared seasonal droughts occurred in the 1660s and 1950s. The recent drought does not yet appear to be unusually severe in either the instrumental or paleoclimatic context. STUDY NOTES: Tree Ring-based reconstructions of upper and lower Rio Grande Basin precipitation and riverflow for the past 500 years. Reconstructed Rio Grande Water Year Flow at Del Norte, CO, in both acre feet and cubic meters per second, plus Reconstructed June-July total precipitation in millimeters, are presented. NCDC-Paleoclimatology https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data - Bauer Bruce Investigator : Woodhouse, C.A. Investigator : Meko, D.M. Investigator : Griffin, D. Investigator : Castro, C.L. 2013-04-16 ONLINE Files online, ASCII https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/14249 https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/northamerica/riogrande2013precip.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/northamerica/riogrande2013flow.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/northamerica/riogrande2013precip.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/northamerica/riogrande2013flow.txt English https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/14249 https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/northamerica/riogrande2013precip.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/northamerica/riogrande2013flow.txt Woodhouse, C.A., D.M. Meko, D. Griffin, and C.L. Castro. 2013. Tree rings and multiseason drought variability in the lower Rio Grande Basin, USA. Water Resources Research, Vol. 49, Issue 2, pp. 844-850. DOI: 10.1002/wrcr.20098 Connie A. Woodhouse, David W. Stahle, José Villanueva Díaz. 2013. Rio Grande and Rio Conchos water supply variability over the past 500 years. Climate Research, Vol. 51, Issue 2, pp. 125-136. DOI: 10.3354/cr01059 START YEAR: 1508 AD * END YEAR: 2008 AD -108.12 31.75 -106 37.6886