"Motivation": The motivation for this briefing is to examine the large inhomogeneity (step shift) in the observed temperature record at the SNOw TELemetry (SNOTEL) stations in the Intermountain West—Colorado, Utah and Wyoming—and its implications for climate, hydrology and ecological research in the region. This issue impacts the entire SNOTEL network across the 11 Western states, as demonstrated by Jared Oyler of the University of Montana and his colleagues in Oyler et al. (2015). Here we build on that work by performing finer-grained analyses, and identifying the implications for climate studies that have incorporated SNOTEL temperature data. In doing so, we intend to promote a broader awareness of this issue among the climate impacts assessment community.

There is growing evidence that the rate of warming is amplified with elevation, such that high-mountain environments experience more rapid changes in temperature than environments at lower elevations. Elevation-dependent warming (EDW) can accelerate the rate of change in mountain ecosystems, cryospheric systems, hydrological regimes and biodiversity. Here we review important mechanisms that contribute towards EDW: snow albedo and surface-based feedbacks; water vapour changes and latent heat release; surface water vapour and radiative flux changes; surface heat loss and temperature change; and aerosols. All lead to enhanced warming with elevation (or at a critical elevation), and it is believed that combinations of these mechanisms may account for contrasting regional patterns of EDW. We discuss future needs to increase knowledge of mountain temperature trends and their controlling mechanisms through improved observations, satellite-based remote sensing and model simulations.

This 2-pager describes the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI), which is a drought index that can serve as an indicator of both rapidly evolving “flash” droughts (developing over a few weeks) and sustained droughts (developing over months but lasting up to years).

The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming are preparing for drought and other climate fluctuations with help from a broad coalition of scientists, including groups at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Read More:   http://drought.unl.edu/NewsOutreach/NDMCNews.aspx?id=204

The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming are preparing for drought and other climate fluctuations with help from a broad coalition of scientists.  Read More:  https://www.drought.gov/drought/sites/drought.gov.drought/files/media/whatisnidis/Newsletter/October%202015%20v4.pdf  

The HPRCC has an established partnership with the North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) and has enjoyed collaborating on regional projects since its inception. Housed at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, the NC CSC is one of eight such centers that were established in 2010 within the U.S. Department of the Interior. The mission of the Climate Science Centers is to help meet the changing needs of land and resource managers across the U.S. (For more information on the Climate Science Centers, please visit: https://www.doi.gov/csc/about.) The NC CSC collaborates with a consortium of nine institutions that provide expertise in climate science and sectors impacted by climate. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where HPRCC is housed, is a member of this consortium. Read More:   http://hprcc.unl.edu/hprccquarterly/HPRCCQuarterly-Fall2015.pdf

Members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes have been working with an interdisciplinary team of social, ecological, and climate scientists from the North Central CSC, the High Plains Regional Climate Center, and the National Drought Mitigation Center along with other university and agency partners to prepare regular climate and drought summaries to aid in managing water resources on the Wind River Reservation and in surrounding areas. 

Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAMC-D-15-0276.1): Remotely sensed land skin temperature (LST) is increasingly being used to improve gridded interpolations of near-surface air temperature. The appeal of LST as a spatial predictor of air temperature rests in the fact that it is an observation available at spatial resolutions fine enough to capture topoclimatic and biophysical variations. However, it remains unclear if LST improves air temperature interpolations over what can already be obtained with simpler terrain-based predictor variables. Here, the relationship between LST and air temperature is evaluated across the conterminous United States (CONUS). It is found that there are significant differences in the ability of daytime and nighttime observations of LST to improve air temperature interpolations. Daytime LST mainly indicates finescale biophysical variation and is generally a poorer predictor of maximum air temperature than simple linear models based on elevation, longitude, and latitude. Moderate improvements to maximum air temperature interpolations are thus limited to specific mountainous areas in winter, to coastal areas, and to semiarid and arid regions where daytime LST likely captures variations in evaporative cooling and aridity. In contrast, nighttime LST represents important topoclimatic variation throughout the mountainous western CONUS and significantly improves nighttime minimum air temperature interpolations. In regions of more homogenous terrain, nighttime LST also captures biophysical patterns related to land cover. Both daytime and nighttime LST display large spatial and seasonal variability in their ability to improve air temperature interpolations beyond simpler approaches.

This research element supports vulnerability assessment for climate adaptation (Glick et al. 2011) by focusing on the provision of best available climate information for the region in order to inform analysis of ecosystem exposure to change.  Climate in the North Central United States (NCUS) is driven by a combination that includes large-scale patterns in atmospheric circulation, the region’s complex topography extending from the High Rockies to the Great Plains, and geographic variations in water and surface-energy balance.  Hydroclimatic variability within the NCUS determines the sustainability of ecosystems in the region as well as the ecosystem goods and services they provide.  We propose, therefore, to use a diverse set of region-specific approaches for developing a hydroclimatology that is faithful to the full range of temporal and spatial scales of climate processes in order to evaluate efficacy of climate model simulations, provide interpretation of climate change mechanisms, and advance understanding of co-variability between climate, ecosystems, and species of interest to stakeholders.