BIO

I am a senior majoring in meteorology from Zephyrhills, FL. I hope to one day work for the National Weather Service or a daughter agency under NOAA.

An Atmospheric-Terrestrial Teleconnection Study for Lake Sinkhole Dry-Down Events in Tallahassee, Florida

Abstract

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a climate pattern that involves the fluctuation of sea surface temperatures above the equatorial Pacific, caused by a change in the direction of the trade winds in that region. For the southeast United States, it has been long established that, in the wintertime, an El Nino event will bring wetter than average conditions and a La Nina event will bring drier than average conditions. This, of course, includes Florida's panhandle. A majority of the panhandle, including Tallahassee, is made up of karst. This makes it so that the terrain is very soluble and porous, allowing precipitation to eventually flow into groundwater and alter the groundwater level in the Floridan Aquifer. From here, it has been established that more precipitation (wetter conditions) would lead to rising groundwater levels and less precipitation (drier conditions) would lead to sinking groundwater levels. And, following that path of logic, a fluctuation in groundwater levels in the aquifer has been seen to affect the frequency of sinkholes, or more specifically, lake sinkholes. These individual relationships have been long established on a larger spatial scale. The goal of this research is to apply similar methods to determine if the relationship exists between ENSO and groundwater fluctuation on a local scale so it can later be applied to predict the behavior of sinkholes.

Keywords: sinkhole groundwater precipitation ENSO hydrology