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Estimating Precipitation in the Central Cascades of Washington

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Estimating Precipitation in the Central Cascades of Washington JUNE 2002 HAYES ET AL. 335 Estimating Precipitation in the Central Cascades of Washington P. S . H AYES,L.A.RASMUSSEN, AND H. CONWAY Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (Manuscript received 3 May 2001, in ®nal form 7 December 2001) ABSTRACT Precipitation in the central Cascades of Washington correlates well over 1966±96 with wind and moisture in twice-daily upper-air soundings at a radiosonde station near the Paci®c coast, 225 km away. A simple model estimates precipitation by using the component of the wind roughly normal to the north±south range of the Cascade Mountains, which it raises to a power and scales by the relative humidity. Values at 850 mb are taken as an index of the total moisture ¯ux. Thresholds are imposed for the wind component and the relative humidity to reduce the likelihood of estimating precipitation from weak onshore ¯ow on dry days. A split-sample analysis indicates that the model parameters are highly robust against sampling error. This moisture ¯ux model estimates precipitation over 5-day periods with the coef®cient of determination r2 ø 0.55, which increases for precipitation aggregated over 30-day periods to 0.75 and decreases to 0.30 for daily precipitation. Results over a 4-month period in the winter of 1996/97 were comparable to those from an advanced mesoscale precipitation model. The model estimates water-year (October±September) runoff for the period 1966±96 from two drainage basins in the region with r2 ø 0.8, and on 1 May forecasts subsequent May±September runoff with r2 ø 0.4. 1. Introduction the range, as in the Sierra Nevada (Pandey et al. 1999), Determining the mesoscale distribution of precipita- or the direction of greatest moisture transport, as for the tion is important on a daily basis for ¯ood and avalanche cone-shaped Olympic Peninsula. forecasting, and over longer periods for water resource The model has both advantages and shortcomings. It management, including hydroelectric power generation, is very economical of computer resources. It takes as ®sheries, irrigation, and municipal water supply. Al- its few inputs upper-air variables that have been rou- though advances in computing technology have made tinely measured globally since 1948. These data are high-resolution numerical precipitation models increas- meticulously checked and systematically archived in the ingly accessible, simple models may provide adequate National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) precipitation estimates for many purposes. Numerous reanalysis database (Kalnay et al. 1996), as well as being studies have demonstrated strong correlations between produced by general circulation models. The model is large-scale atmospheric variables and observed precip- limited to use for stations with an existing precipitation itation at the surface (Cayan and Roads 1984; Wilby record, because the record is needed to calibrate two and Wigley 2000; Widmann and Bretherton 2000). Ras- station-speci®c model parameters. An additional short- mussen et al. (2001) describe a model that estimates coming is that the variance of estimated precipitation is precipitation on the Olympic peninsula of western smaller than observed. Applications needing precipi- Washington from 850-mb wind and moisture at a nearby tation estimates over periods of several days or more radiosonde station. Here we test that model at 14 stations might ®nd the output satisfactory: for instance, esti- and over two drainage basins in the central Cascades of mation of the water content of mountain snowpacks and Washington to determine how the model does for sta- of glacier accumulation, or extension of a precipitation tions at greater distances from the radiosonde, at stations record that spans only a part of the radiosonde era. of low and high elevation, as well as how well moisture ¯ux at the radiosonde station correlates to basin runoff. a. Previous work In addition, we test the model along the linear Cascades to investigate whether the critical direction is primarily Numerous studies have investigated the distribution from the direction perpendicular to the orientation of of precipitation (Schermerhorn 1967; Rasmussen and Tangborn 1976; Speers 1986) and the interaction of storms with the Cascade Mountains (Hobbs et al. 1971, Corresponding author address: L. A. Rasmussen, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Box 351310, 1975). Mass (1981, 1982) analyzed the in¯uence on Seattle, WA 98195. precipitation in western Washington from topographi- E-mail: [email protected] cally forced convergence and diurnal variations in cir- q 2002 American Meteorological Society Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/28/21 10:31 PM UTC 336 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 3 culation. Chien and Mass (1997b) used the nonhydro- layute radiosonde (Fig. 1) from 1 August 1966 through static version 5 of the Pennsylvania State University 31 December 1996. Station elevations (Table 1) differ (PSU)±National Center for Atmospheric Research from the contours in Fig. 1 because smoothed topog- (NCAR) mesoscale model (MM5) to investigate the im- raphy exerts more control over precipitation than actual pact of the Olympic and Cascade Mountains on the topography (Schermerhorn 1967; Rasmussen and Tang- development of a Puget Sound convergence zone. In- born 1976; Speers 1986). The NWS precipitation re- teractions of individual frontal systems with the com- cords, published monthly by state in the National Oce- plex terrain of the Paci®c Northwest were modeled with anic and Atmospheric Administrations Climatological MM5 in several studies (Colle and Mass 1996, 2000; Data summaries (NOAA 1966±96), included nine co- Colle et al. 1999a; Chien and Mass 1997a; Steenburgh operative observer sites and the Weather Service Con- and Mass 1996). Colle et al. (1999b) evaluated MM5 tract Meteorological Observatory at Stampede Pass. The at approximately 150 stations across the Paci®c North- Quillayute radiosonde observations are archived by the west from 9 December 1996 to 30 April 1997. They National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Car- found a relative error (P* 2 P)/P for individual stations olina, and are reformatted and distributed by the Data in the Cascades for the 143-day period exceeding 10.40 Support Section of NCAR in Boulder, Colorado. ``along many of the steep windward slopes.'' The mea- Precipitation measured hourly by heated tipping sured precipitation is P, and the model estimate is P*. bucket gauges during the wet season between 1984 and Barros and Lettenmaier (1993) calibrated their three- 1996 (Table 1), and summed to get daily totals, at four dimensional model with observed precipitation over the Northwest Avalanche Center (NWAC) telemetry sites Olympic Peninsula for 1967, then compared estimated was also compared with radiosonde observations. The precipitation for the period 1968±74 with observed sta- correlation between Quillayute 850-mb winds and winds tion precipitation and snow course amounts as well as in the Cascades was examined with measurements from average precipitation over three drainage basins: relative an unheated anemometer at the NWAC site on the sum- errors for winter totals were 10.36 for the Hoh, 10.25 mit of Denny Mountain, adjacent to Snoqualmie Pass for the Quinault, and 20.11 for the Elwha River basins. (Fig. 1). Wilson et al. (1992) describe a stochastic model for From January 1948 until the radiosonde station estimating daily precipitation from weather states, moved to Quillayute in 1966, it was at a location about which are de®ned in terms of large-scale surface pres- 50 km to the north and 10 km to the west. Radiosonde sure; 850-, 700-, and 500-mb geopotential heights; and soundings usually occur at 0400 and 1600 local standard 850-mb wind. The model estimated precipitation over time (LST), their universal time coordinates being, re- 1964±88 at Cedar Lake with relative errors of 20.11 spectively, 1200 UTC of the current day and 0000 UTC for January±March, 20.04 for April±June, 10.06 for of the following day. Occasional soundings at times an July±September, and 20.11 for October±December [P* hour or so different were interpolated linearly to these and P values taken from Wilson et al. (1992, their Table times during construction of the database used in this 6)]. Relative errors at Stampede Pass for the four seasons study. Precipitation observations at the NWS stations were 10.03, 10.14, 10.15, and 20.03. are at 0000 or about 0800 or 1700 LST for the previous From a qualitative correlation between water vapor 24-h period. ¯ux and observed daily precipitation in California, Kim (1997) suggests that ``the amount of precipitation within 2. Climatology the region may be directly related to the large-scale moisture ¯ux ®eld.'' Pandey et al. (1999) found that In western Washington, Puget Sound separates the winter precipitation in California correlates strongly cone-shaped Olympic Mountains from the Cascade with 700-mb moisture ¯ux from 2408, the direction nor- Mountains, which are aligned north to south about 225 mal to the mean trend of the Sierra Nevada. Rasmussen km east of the Paci®c coast (Fig. 1). A chain of volcanic et al. (2001) demonstrated that daily precipitation at peaks, with elevations to 4400 m (Mt. Rainier), extend Forks, a lowland station on the west side of the Olympic from British Columbia south into Oregon, west of the Peninsula, correlates well with the 850-mb moisture ¯ux Cascade crest which has peaks as high as 3000 m and from 2388 at a nearby radiosonde station; elsewhere on gaps as low as 1000 m. the peninsula, precipitation correlates better with the The Cascade range strongly in¯uences the distribu- moisture ¯ux from the southwest than in the local up- tion of precipitation over the region, with mean annual slope direction. amounts ranging from approximately 900 mm in the Puget Sound lowlands west of the range, to 1400±3000 mm along the crest, and 200±500 mm east of the moun- b.
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