The Upper Rio Grande & the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

And some other streams..

It’s somewhat amazing how close the correspondence appears to be for so many locations around New Mexico and related.  I’ve produced a paper for peer review and am shopping it around.  I’ll get some references poured into this post soon.

First, a simple image comparing 4 yr trailing averages of the PDO to the Otowi gage on the Upper Rio Grande in Northern New Mexico,

Second a comparison of the Otowi record to that of four other gages for various reaches, tributaries etc from relatively nearby to the Otowi to relatively far away.. as far away as the Gila River in SW New Mexico.  Some of those records are a bit shorter than the Otowi record length so for that image, I’ve truncated to 1930,.

Finally for now, a comparison of the Otowi gage correlation to the PDO, the AMO, the ENSO, and GHGs under three different moving averages.

Although the PDO does show a high correlation for the record span and moving averages of concern, the correlations were even higher for selected spans of the past.  Also they have been lower under selected spans.  I am cautioning myself and any reader for that matter, not to view the PDO as the single driver for NM climate for all times to come.  Even so, for the time being its value would be hard to object to.

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