The Dynamics of Closed Basin Hydrology and Climate Variability

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The need for a better understanding of the relation between hydrologic extremes (droughts and floods) and long term climatic variability is underscored by concerns of anthropogenic climate change. Investigations into these relations using closed basin lakes and their basin hydrology are proposed. The Great Salt Lake basin is arid and heterogeneous. Its climatic signal is well correlated with the Western U.S. Recent climate research into sources of determinism (e.g. ENSO) in global climatic variability has been very fruitful. Such research has blossomed through creative data interpretation, and modeling of feedbacks and interactions. The proposed research is in the same spirit. On interest is the identification of persistent climatic anomalies, their generating regimes; the aggregate basin hydrologic response and feedbacks; transitions between regimes; their sensitivity to initial conditions and parameters, and to dynamic changes in forcing functions. A nonlinear dynamical systems perspective is adopted. Nonparametric methods for data analysis and systgm identification are proposed. Physical and data based arguments for the possibility of chaotic behavior in the coupled lake-basin-climate system, and the presence of multiple regimes are advanced. The development of finite physical-statistical-dynamic models to study system sensitivities is proposed.