Atmospheric rivers are responsible for cyclicity in Sierra Nevada precipitation

Abstract Cool-season (November–March) precipitation contributes critically to California’s water resources and flood risk. In the Sierra Nevada, approximately half of cool-season precipitation is derived from a small proportion of storms classified as atmospheric rivers (ARs). The frequency and intensity of ARs are highly variable from year to year and unreliable climate teleconnections limit forecasting. However, previous research provides intriguing evidence of cycles with biennial (2.2-year) and decadal (10–20-year) periodicities in Sierra Nevada cool-season precipitation, suggesting it is not purely stochastic. To identify the source of this cyclicity, we decompose daily precipitation records (1949–2022) into contributions from ARs vs non-ARs, as well as into variations in frequency and intensity. We find that the biennial and decadal spectral peaks in Sierra Nevada precipitation totals are entirely due to precipitation delivered by ARs, and primarily due to variations in the frequency of days with AR precipitation. While total non-AR precipitation correlates with sea-surface temperature (SST) and atmospheric pressure patterns associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, AR precipitation shows no consistent remote teleconnections at any periodicity. Supporting this finding, atmospheric simulations forced by observed SSTs do not reproduce the biennial or decadal precipitation variations identified in observations. These results, combined with the lack of long-term stable cycles in previously published tree-ring reconstructions, suggest that the observed biennial and decadal quasi-cyclicity in Sierra Nevada precipitation is unreliable as a forecasting tool.