Coupled effects of climate teleconnections on drought, Santa Ana winds and wildfires in southern California

Projections of future climate change impacts suggest an increase of wildfire activity in Mediterranean ecosystems, such as southern California. This region is a wildfire hotspot and fire managers are under increasingly high pressures to minimize socio-economic impacts. In this context, predictions of high-risk fire seasons are essential to achieve adequate preventive planning. Regional-scale weather patterns and climatic teleconnections play a key role in modulating fire-conducive conditions across the globe, yet an analysis of the coupled effects of these systems onto the spread of large wildfires is lacking for the region. We analyzed seven decades (1953–2018) of documentary wildfire records from southern California to assess the linkages between weather patterns and large-scale climate modes using various statistical techniques, including Redundancy Analysis, Superposed Epoch Analysis and Wavelet Coherence. We found that high area burned is significantly associated with the occurrence of adverse weather patterns, such as severe droughts and Santa Ana winds. Further, we document how these fire-promoting events are mediated by climate teleconnections, particularly by the coupled effects of El Niño Southern Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation

Exotic ρ±ρ0\rho^\pm\rho^0 state photoproduction

It is shown that the list of unusual mesons planned for a careful study in photoproduction can be extended by the exotic states $X^\pm(1600)$ with $I^G(J ^{PC})=2^+(2^{++})$ which should be looked for in the $\rho^\pm\rho^0$ decay channels in the reactions $\gamma N\to\rho^\pm\rho^0N$ and $\gamma N\to\rho^\pm \rho^0\Delta$. The full classification of the $\rho^\pm\rho^0$ states by their quantum numbers is presented. A simple model for the spin structure of the $\gamma p\to f_2(1270)p$, $\gamma p\to a^0_2(1320)p$, and $\gamma N\to X^\pm (N, \Delta)$ reaction amplitudes is formulated and the tentative estimates of the corresponding cross sections at the incident photon energy $E_\gamma\approx 6$ GeV are obtained: $\sigma(\gamma p\to f_2(1270)p)\approx0.12$ $\mu$b, $\sigma(\gamma p\to a^0_2(1320)p)\approx0.25$ $\mu$b, $\sigma(\gamma N\to X^\pm N\to\rho^\pm\rho^0N)\approx0.018$ $\mu$b, and $\sigma(\gamma p\to X^-\Delta^{++ }\to\rho^-\rho^0\Delta^{++})\approx0.031$ $\mu$b. The problem of the $X^\pm$ signal extraction from the natural background due to the other $\pi^\pm\pi^0 \pi^+\pi^-$ production channels is discussed. In particular the estimates are presented for the $\gamma p\to h_1(1170)\pi^+n$, $\gamma p\to\rho'^{+}n\to \pi^+\pi^0\pi^+\pi^-n$, and $\gamma p\to\omega\rho^0p$ reaction cross sections. Our main conclusion is that the search for the exotic $X^\pm(2^+(2^{++}))$ states is quite feasible at JEFLAB facility. The expected yield of the $\gamma N\to X^\pm N\to\rho^\pm\rho^0N$ events in a 30-day run at the 100% detection efficiency approximates $2.8\times10^6$ events.Comment: 19 pages, revtex, 1 figure in postscipt, some comments and references added, a few minor typos corrected, to be published in Phys. Rev.