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- PP42B-05: The limits of modeling water isotopes using moisture convergence alone
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NOLA CC
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Tyler Kukla, University of Washington (First Author, Presenting Author)
Rich Fiorella, Los Alamos National Labs
Nicholas Siler, Oregon State University
Water isotopes in precipitation respond to changes in the phase of water and its transport over space. Precipitation and evaporation affect both of these factors: they cycle water from a liquid to a gas, and their difference is balanced by moisture convergence, a key component of transport. As a result, it is possible to estimate the spatial distribution of water isotopes from precipitation and evaporation alone. This works well along a single dimension — the average climate at each latitude. Here, we test whether it is similarly effective across longitude as well, and we find that it is not. That’s because when we account for longitude we also must consider rotational transport, which conveniently collapses to zero in the latitude-only case. Rotational transport matters because it is independent from precipitation and evaporation, but it has a big effect on the spatial distribution of water isotopes. However, we also show that changes in rotational transport can be relatively small over time, particularly in the tropics. This means that if we know the initial pattern of rotational transport, changes in precipitation and evaporation alone can be used to approximate changes in water isotopes in the tropics, at least in some circumstances.
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