New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

The factors influencing the North American monsoon and New Mexico’s summer precipitation are investigated using statistical relationships. Antecedent conditions including snowpack, spring wildfires and other aerosol forcing, and sea surface temperature in the Niño 3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific, have each been linked to the onset of the monsoon or the total precipitation during the monsoon season. This study aims to synthesize several previous studies by considering all of these antecedent variables, in order to produce a multivariate empirical predictive scheme.

High antecedent snowpack and wildfire/aerosol forcing are negatively correlated with onset and precipitation, while the correlation between SST and the monsoon is more complex. These variables show different relationships with the monsoon in two periods, 1961-1990 and 1991- 2006; the causes of this shift are under investigation.