Gulf of California Sea Surface Temperatures and the North American Monsoon: Mechanistic Implications from Observations

Mitchell, David L.; Ivanova, Dorothea; Rabin, Robert M.; Brown, Timothy J.; Redmond, Kelly T.

doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2002)015<2261:gocsst>2.0.co;2

Cited by 112 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Horizontal oceanic heat transport is known to be important to the southern GoC heat balance (Castro et al 2006;Lavin and Marinone 2003;Lavin et al 2006;Marinone 2003;Mascarenhas et al 2004), but the impacts of individual transient surges have not received much attention. This coincidence of the increase in GoC SST with an atmospheric moisture flux into southwestern United States, that is, two independent responses to the same largescale circulation change, may help explain the correlation observed between GoC SST and U.S. monsoonal moisture despite the small basin size of the GoC (e.g., Mitchell et al 2002).…”

mentioning

confidence: 81%

On Air–Sea Interaction at the Mouth of the Gulf of California

et al. 2007

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Surface flux, wind profiler, oceanic temperature and salinity, and atmospheric moisture, cloud, and wind observations gathered from the R/V Altair during the North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME) are presented. The vessel was positioned at the mouth of the Gulf of California halfway between La Paz and Mazatlan (ϳ23.5°N, 108°W), from 7 July to 11 August 2004, with a break from 22 to 27 July. Experimentmean findings include a net heat input from the atmosphere into the ocean of 70 W m . Total accumulated rainfall amounted to 42 mm. The oceanic mixed layer had a depth of approximately 20 m and both warmed and freshened during the experiment, despite a dominance of evaporation over local precipitation. The mean atmospheric boundary layer depth was approximately 410 m, deepening with time from an initial value of 350 m. The mean near-surface relative humidity was 66%, increasing to 73% at the top of the boundary layer. The rawinsondes documented an additional moist layer between 2-and 3-km altitude associated with a land-sea breeze, and a broad moist layer at 5-6 km associated with land-based convective outflow. The observational period included a strong gulf surge around 13 July associated with the onset of the summer monsoon in southern Arizona. During this surge, mean 1000-700-hPa winds reached 12 m s Ϫ1, net surface fluxes approached zero, and the atmosphere moistened significantly but little rainfall occurred. The experiment-mean wind diurnal cycle was dominated by mainland Mexico and consisted of a near-surface westerly sea breeze along with two easterly return flows, one at 2-3 km and another at 5-6 km. Each of these altitudes experienced nighttime cloudiness. The corresponding modulation of the radiative cloud forcing diurnal cycle provided a slight positive feedback upon the sea surface temperature. Two findings were notable. One was an advective warming of over 1°C in the oceanic mixed layer temperature associated with the 13 July surge. The second was the high nighttime cloud cover fraction at 5-6 km, dissipating during the day. These clouds appeared to be thin, stratiform, slightly supercooled liquid-phase clouds. The preference for the liquid phase increases the likelihood that the clouds can be advected farther from their source and thereby contribute to a higher-altitude horizontal moisture flux into the United States.

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confidence: 81%

On Air–Sea Interaction at the Mouth of the Gulf of California

et al. 2007

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“…The concordance of warm Gulf of California SST, which correlates with enhanced North American (Mexican) monsoon activity (Mitchell et al, 2003;Barron et al, 2005) suggests a mechanism for alluvial fan aggradation. More intense and/or more frequent monsoon events may initiate transport of sediment stored on hillslopes resulting in alluvial fan deposition.…”

Section: Alluvial Fansmentioning

confidence: 96%

Holocene landscape response to seasonality of storms in the Mojave Desert

Miller

Schmidt

Mahan

et al. 2010

Quaternary International

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Rene, "Holocene landscape response to seasonality of storms in the Mojave Desert" (2010 Periods of alluvial fan aggradation across the Mojave Desert are 14-9 cal ka and 6-3 cal ka. This timing largely correlates to times of increased sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of California and enhanced warm-season monsoons. This correlation suggests that sustained alluvial fan aggradation may be driven by intense summer-season storms. These data suggest that the close proximity of the Mojave Desert to the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California promotes a partitioning of landscape-process responses to climate forcings that vary with seasonality of the dominant storms. Coolseason Pacific frontal storms cause river flow, ephemeral lakes, and fan incision, whereas periods of intense warm-season storms cause hillslope erosion and alluvial fan aggradation. The proposed landscape-process partitioning has important implications for hazard mitigation given that climate change may increase sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of California, which indirectly could increase future alluvial fan aggradation.

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“…Castro et al (2007) have shown that the quality of NAM simulation by RCMs is strongly dependent on external driving data that have to reproduce correctly the essential teleconnections and climatology. The degree to which the SST is reproduced in the area, adjacent to the NAM zone, is also of primary importance: it has been shown by Mitchell et al (2002) that the NAM, especially over its northern area in Arizona, strongly depends on the SST in the northern part of the Gulf of California. While the ERA-Interim SST data, used in these CRCM5 simulations, are based on observations, it can be supposed that relatively small biases in SST can still be present in these data and contribute to the NAM-associated precipitation bias in the northern part of the NAM area.…”

Section: North American Monsoonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reanalysis-driven climate simulation over CORDEX North America domain using the Canadian Regional Climate Model, version 5: model performance evaluation

et al. 2013

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The performance of reanalysis-driven Canadian Regional Climate Model, version 5 (CRCM5) in reproducing the present climate over the North American COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment domain for the 1989-2008 period has been assessed in comparison with several observation-based datasets. The model reproduces satisfactorily the near-surface temperature and precipitation characteristics over most part of North America. Coastal and mountainous zones remain problematic: a cold bias (2-6°C) prevails over Rocky Mountains in summertime and all year-round over Mexico; winter precipitation in mountainous coastal regions is overestimated. The precipitation patterns related to the North American Monsoon are well reproduced, except on its northern limit. The spatial and temporal structure of the Great Plains Low-Level Jet is well reproduced by the model; however, the night-time precipitation maximum in the jet area is underestimated. The performance of CRCM5 was assessed against earlier CRCM versions and other RCMs. CRCM5 is shown to have been substantially improved compared to CRCM3 and CRCM4 in terms of seasonal mean statistics, and to be comparable to other modern RCMs.

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Gulf of California Sea Surface Temperatures and the North American Monsoon: Mechanistic Implications from Observations

Cited by 112 publications

References 35 publications

On Air–Sea Interaction at the Mouth of the Gulf of California

On Air–Sea Interaction at the Mouth of the Gulf of California

Holocene landscape response to seasonality of storms in the Mojave Desert

Reanalysis-driven climate simulation over CORDEX North America domain using the Canadian Regional Climate Model, version 5: model performance evaluation

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