Precipitation Trends 19502050 and correlation with land use change

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Precipitation Trends (1950-2050) and correlation
with land use change

• Amanda M. Hallock
• Jackson School of Geosciences

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What are my questions?

• A) How have precipitation patterns changed, and
  how are they predicted to change in the future?
• B) How does the changing precipitation pattern
  influence LULC change (and vice versa)?

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Why is this important?

• LULC change (deforestation, conversion of land
  for agriculture, urban development) can have a
  direct impact on precipitation patterns and needs
• Texas is the 3rd largest irrigator, and major
  agricultural source

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Methods

• Collect data (NOAA Reanalysis data) Monthly
  precipitation
• Conversion of data into useable format
• Masking and Raster analysis
• Statistical analysis

Figure 1 ASCII data in matrix format shown with
header file
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Masking
Figure 2 Watershed boundaries for state of Texas
Figure 3 Mask overlay of watershed
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Using mask to clip rasters
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Image of clipped raster
Figure 5 Clipped raster of year 1950.
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Analysis

• Look at change between the years
• Look for predicted extreme changes

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Precipitation Changes from 1950-2000
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Precipitation Changes from 2000-2050
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Extreme precipitation changes between 2000-2050
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Conclusions/Future Work

• Obviously, add more precipitation data
• Include LULC data for comparison (too
  optimistic?)
• Look at irrigation patterns
• Statistical stuff

• Irrigation enhances precipitation downwind,
  yielding storms of greater duration, length, and
  accumulation.
• Estimate that an additional 6 to 18 of summer
  precipitation attributable to irrigation falls
  90 km downwind of the irrigated region.

Moore, N., and S. Rojstaczer (2002)
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Questions?