Sarah Lynn Fingerle

Motivation Background Key points Suggested paths of inquiry

Why the Southwest United States? How is the SW US susceptible to climate

change?

•The Southwest United States receives most of its moisture from Monsoon Precipitation

•Three water sources: Pacific Ocean, Gulf of California, Gulf of Mexico

•Secondary water sources include latent soil moisture and mountain run off

•Moisture propagation affected by wave motions

Warm SSTs in the Pacific Ocean reduce monsoon precipitation (Mo & Paegle 2000)

Increased precipitation variability leads to soil drying out (Anderson et al 2009)

A large wintertime snowpack leads to a dampening of the summertime monsoon (Gutzler 2000)

The PDO and ENSO working together dampen monsoon-type precipitation (Brown 2011)

Closer examination of the influence of the Gulf of Mexico

Westward propagating tropical waves in the Gulf of Mexico

Extend area of interest to include Mexico

Motivation Background Key points Suggested further work

www.denix.osd.milcultureeveryday.com

Anderson, Bruce T., Catherine Reifen, Ralf Toumi, 2009: Identification of Nonlinear Behavior in Transient Climate Change Projections of Soil Moisture over the United States. Earth Interactions, 13, 1-13.

  Brown, David P., 2011: Winter Circulation Anomalies in the Western United States Associated

with Antecedent and Decadal ENSO Variability. Earth Interactions. 15, 1-12.   Carleton, Andrew M., Duane A. Carpenter, Paul J. Weser, 1990: Mechanisms of Interannual Variability of

the Southwest United States Summer Rainfall Maximum. J. Climate. 3, 999-1015.   Chistiansen, Daniel E., Steven L. Markstrom, Lauren E. Hay, 2011: Impacts of Climate Change on

the Growing Season in the United States. Earth Interactions, 15, 1-17.   Gutzler, David S., 2000: Covariability of Spring Snowpack and Summer Rainfall across the Southwest

United States. J. Climate.13, 4018-4027.   Mo, Kingtse C., and Julia Nogues Paegle, 2000: Influence of Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies on

the Precipitation Regimes over the Southwest United States. J. Climate. 13, 3588-3598.   Peterson, Thomas C., et al, 2013: Monitoring and Understanding changes in Heat Waves, Cold

Waves, Floods, and Droughts in the United States. BAMS, June, 821-834. (not this one)   Swetnam, Thomas W., and Julio L. Betancourt, 1998: Mesoscale Disturbance and Ecological

Response to Decadal Climate Variability in the American Southwest. J. Climate, 11, 3128-314   Yuan, Huiling, et al, 2007: Short-Range Probabilistic Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts over

the Southwest United States by the RSM Ensemble System. MWR, 135, 1685-1698.