Jun 19 2007
North American Monsoon and ENSO?
From Forecasting monsoon remains a cloudy endeavorby Shaun McKinnon in The Arizona Republic:
Christopher Castro, a climate scientist at UA who has worked on monsoon study projects for several years, believes many of the answers can be found in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, using the same changes in sea-surface temperatures that produce El Niño and La Niña, two powerful phenomena.
Until recently, scientists didn’t see strong links between those two weather-makers and the monsoon, but Castro said his research suggests the link exists.
Crunching 50 years’ worth of data, Castro concluded that Arizona’s winter and summer precipitation seasons ran on opposite tracks. When El Niño produced a wet winter, a later and drier monsoon would follow. When La Niña steered rain and snow away from the state during the winter, an earlier and wetter monsoon often resulted.
This sounds like interesting stuff. I have the archived ENSO data, as seen in my previous posts. I don’t have any indication of what they are using for the strength of the monsoon. I do have precipitation data from the airport over the hundred years or so (the airport did move in that time though). I might do some simple analysis on this later this week.
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