Introduction

In 1984, a workshop was held on "climatic variability of the eastern North Pacific and western North America." From it has emerged an annual series of workshops held each spring at the Asilomar Conference Center, Monterey Peninsula, California. These annual gatherings have come to be called PACLIM (Pacific Climate) Workshops, reflecting broad interests in the climatologies associated with the Pacific Ocean. Participants in the six workshops that have convened since 1984 have included atmospheric scientists, hydrologists, geologists, glaciologists, oceanographers, limnologists, and both marine and terrestrial biologists.

Climatic effects on flood frequency: an example from southern Arizona

EXTRACT (SEE PDF FOR FULL ABSTRACT): After 1960, the Santa Cruz River at Tucson, Arizona, an ephemeral stream normally dominated by summer floods, experienced an apparent increased frequency of flooding coincident with an increased percentage of annual floods occurring in fall and winter. This shift reflects large-scale and low-frequency changes in the eastern Pacific Ocean, in part associated with El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena. ... Questions are raised about the validity of standard methods of flood-frequency analysis to estimate regulatory and designed floods.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena and forest fires in the southwestern United States

Fire statistics (area burned) and fire-scar chronologies from tree rings show reduced fire activity during El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in forests of Arizona and New Mexico. This relationship probably stems from increased fuel moisture after a wet winter and spring, but also could involve climatic controls on lightning activity at the onset of the monsoon season.

Introduction

In 1984, a workshop was held on "Climatic variability of the eastern North Pacific and western North America". From it has emerged an annual series of workshops held each spring at the Asilomar Conference Center, Monterey Peninsula, California. These annual gatherings have come to be called PACLIM (Pacific Climate) Workshops, reflecting broad interests in the climatologies associated with the Pacific Ocean.

Terrestrial ecosystem response to interdecadal climate variability in the western United States [abstract]

EXTRACT (SEE PDF FOR FULL ABSTRACT): We argue that the most important climatically-driven terrestrial ecosystem changes are concentrated in annual- to decadal-scale episodic events. These rapid ecosystem responses to climate change are manifested as regionally synchronized disturbance events (eg, floods, fires, and insect outbreaks) and increased drought-caused plant mortality rates.

Geographic patterns in the lag of temperature response to insolation for El Niño vs. La Niña conditions [abstract]

EXTRACT (SEE PDF FOR FULL ABSTRACT): The most important control on the annual cycle of temperature is insolation, with secondary influences from terms related to moisture, yet direct statistical analysis of the moisture-driven modulations (such as El Niño) of the response of temperature to insolation are not available. We have examined one aspect of the relationship between insolation and the instrumental record of maximum daily temperature - the lag between the two - at 252 stations in the western United States.