TY - JOUR
T1 - Regional impacts of irrigation in Mexico and the Southwestern United States on hydrometeorological fields in the North American monsoon region
AU - Mahalov, Alex
AU - Li, Jialun
AU - Hyde, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
This work has been partially supported by NSFGrantDMS 1419593,USDANIFAGrant 2015-67003-23508, and NSF Sustainability Research Network (SRN) Cooperative Agreement 1444758. We are grateful to the two reviewers for the comments and suggestions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Meteorological Society.
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - In this study, the impacts of Mexican and southwestern U.S. agricultural and urban irrigation on North American monsoon (NAM) rainfall and other hydrometeorological fields are investigated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model by implementing an irrigation scheme into the WRF-land surface model. Taking the 2000-12 monsoon seasons as examples, multiple WRF simulations with irrigation are conducted by designing different crops' maximum allowable water depletions (SWm). In comparison with gridded rainfall observations in urban and rural area, the WRF simulations with/without irrigation generally capture the observations very well, but with underestimation along the western slope of the Sierra Madre Occidental (SMO) and overestimation over southern Mexico. The simulations of WRF with irrigation are slightly improved over those without irrigation, compared with rainfall and sounding observations. Sensitivity studies reveal that the impact of irrigation on rainfall varies with location and NAM rainfall variability. Irrigation increases rainfall in eastern Arizona-western New Mexico and in northwestern Mexico because of the irrigation-induced increases of convective available potential energy (CAPE) and precipitable water. Overall, irrigation decreases rainfall in western Arizona, along the western slope of the SMO, and in central Mexico because of irrigation-induced increases of convective inhibition (CIN), decreases of CAPE, and/or large-scale water vapor divergence.
AB - In this study, the impacts of Mexican and southwestern U.S. agricultural and urban irrigation on North American monsoon (NAM) rainfall and other hydrometeorological fields are investigated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model by implementing an irrigation scheme into the WRF-land surface model. Taking the 2000-12 monsoon seasons as examples, multiple WRF simulations with irrigation are conducted by designing different crops' maximum allowable water depletions (SWm). In comparison with gridded rainfall observations in urban and rural area, the WRF simulations with/without irrigation generally capture the observations very well, but with underestimation along the western slope of the Sierra Madre Occidental (SMO) and overestimation over southern Mexico. The simulations of WRF with irrigation are slightly improved over those without irrigation, compared with rainfall and sounding observations. Sensitivity studies reveal that the impact of irrigation on rainfall varies with location and NAM rainfall variability. Irrigation increases rainfall in eastern Arizona-western New Mexico and in northwestern Mexico because of the irrigation-induced increases of convective available potential energy (CAPE) and precipitable water. Overall, irrigation decreases rainfall in western Arizona, along the western slope of the SMO, and in central Mexico because of irrigation-induced increases of convective inhibition (CIN), decreases of CAPE, and/or large-scale water vapor divergence.
KW - Model comparison
KW - Model evaluation/performance
KW - Numerical analysis/modeling
KW - Regional models
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U2 - 10.1175/JHM-D-15-0223.1
DO - 10.1175/JHM-D-15-0223.1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85007232670
SN - 1525-755X
VL - 17
SP - 2981
EP - 2995
JO - Journal of Hydrometeorology
JF - Journal of Hydrometeorology
IS - 12
ER -