Digital Encyclopedia of Earth Science: Why talk about climate change? The main features that influence the areas climate are latitude, regional topography, and a low atmospheric moisture content that leads to quick evaporation. The event devastated the Southwest, shifting a densely forested landscape to one primarily covered with fast-growing herbs and ferns. Since 800,000 years ago, an equilibrium has been reached between warming and cooling, with the ice caps growing and retreating primarily due to the influence of astronomical forces (i.e., the combined gravitational effects of the Earth, Sun, moon, and planets). This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (ARPML-250637-OMLS-22).The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Climate models project a significant increase in the number of days over 95F per year across the Southeast. The new dry-land isthmus blocked the warm ocean currents that had been flowing east-to-west from the Atlantic to the Pacific for more than 100 million years, diverting them into the Gulf of Mexico and ultimately into the western Atlantic Gulf Stream. The climate remained warm, despite large southern ice sheets, but it had grown much drier. Used under a Creative Commons license. The formation of precipitation also causes electrical charging of particles in the atmosphere, which in turn produces lightning. Record high temperatures for the Southwest range from 53C (128F) in Arizona to 47C (117F) in Utah, while record low temperatures range from 56C (69F) in Utah to 40C (40F) in Arizona. Climate change can intensify multiple stresses that push a species past a survival threshold. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Water is already scarce in the Southwest, so every drop is a precious resource. Not really sure if it's possible to even find that rabbit hole let alone getting to the end of it :) Good luck. And yet another element of the monsoon system that needs more study to resolve. The summer precipitation total for the CONUS was 9.48 inches, 1.16 inch above average, ranking eighth wettest in the historical record. As the summer heat builds over North America, a region of high pressure forms over the U.S. Southwest, and the wind becomes more southerly, bringing moisture from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California. Southwest Increased heat, drought, and insect outbreaks, all linked to climate change, have increased wildfires. The long-range forecast team breaks down region by region what to expect during the summer. Cambrian trilobites from the Bright Angel Shale (Tonto Group), Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. (Prescribed burns are an important forest management tool; they are used to consume fuels like dry wood that can ignite and feed wildfires as well as maintain forest health.) Roadcut exposing lake sediments of the Eocene Green River Formation, Duchesne County, Utah. This chapter builds on assessments of climate change in the Southwest region from the three previous U.S. National Climate Assessments. Accessed March 2021. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DmData/DataTables.aspx. Allmon, W. D., T. A. Smrecak, and R. M. Ross. Image by The High Fin Sperm Whale, created from images by NOAA National Weather Service training material (Wikimedia Commons, public domain). Photo by Stefan Klein (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, image cropped and resized). The Southwest Region climate in the United States is often associated with extremes. That's at least one part of a very big climate puzzle crossing that barrier that involves both the ocean and atmosphere. As Pangaea reached its greatest size during the early Triassic, the monsoons intensity increased, and the vast dune deserts of the late Permian were replaced by rivers and floodplains. See you then! Taken on September 23, 2017. Figure by Emily Becker. The risk of dangerous wildfires is currently very high in parts of the Southwest. Average annual preciptiation for the southwestern U.S. What is the weather like in the Southwest region in summer? Today nearly all the glaciers in the Southwest are gone, and the climate is in an arid state. The current drought outlooks expect that the drought in Arizona and New Mexico will improve in the short term, but persist. This led to global cooling and dropping global sea levels. Global temperatures fell further in the late Miocene thanks to the formation of the Himalayas. Precipitation accumulation over the past 12 months, shown as a percent of the average mid-August through mid-August total. Arizona's climate is influenced by three main topographical areas: the high Colorado Plateau (about 15202130 meters or 50007000 feet in elevation), the rugged mountains to the west (27403660 meters or 900012000 feet high), and the low southwestern mountains with desert valleys (as low as 30 meters or 100 feet above sea level). Data for Figure 2 were provided by the National Drought Mitigation Center. Figures 2 and 3 show two ways of measuring drought in the Southwest: the Drought Monitor and the Palmer Drought Severity Index. Moving westward, Colorado's foothills and mountainous areas experience an overall cooler climate and higher levels of precipitation. Dark gray is land, white and light gray are submerged areas. Some of these thunderstorms can be strong, delivering heavy rain and frequent lightning. We can see some hints of this relationship in my scatter-plot here. In the early Carboniferous (Mississippian), ice capped the South Pole and began to expand northward. Photo by Archaeopoda (Wikimedia Commons,Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, image cropped, resized, and labeled). Across New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, summer rains originate from moisture brought into the area from the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, even a small increase in temperature (which drives evaporation) or a decrease in precipitation in this already arid region can seriously threaten natural systems and society. I did a quick comparison of the average JulyAugust rainfall in the monsoon region with the Nio-3.4 index, using 70 years of records. Topics covered on this page: Present climate of the southwestern U.S.; Present temperature; Present precipitation; Severe weather; Regional climate variation; Past climate of the southwestern U.S.; Paleozoic; Mesozoic; Cenozoic; Future climate of the southwestern U.S.; Resources. In a broad sense, the Southwests climate is mostly dry and hot, with much of the region characterized as arid. Every part of the Southwest experienced higher average temperatures between 2000 and 2020than the long-term average (18952020). MacDonald, G.M. The ENSO blog is written, edited, and moderated by Michelle LHeureux (NOAA Climate Prediction Center), Emily Becker (University of Miami/CIMAS), Nat Johnson (NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory), and Tom DiLiberto and Rebecca Lindsey (contractors to NOAA Climate Program Office), with periodic guest contributors. The thunderstorm begins. Map by NOAA(public domain) modified for the[emailprotected]project. The March-April-May (MAM) 2023 temperature outlook favors below-normal. The monsoon's intensity waned by the early Jurassic, and the rivers and floodplains were replaced by even larger deserts. Paleontological Research Institution Special Publication 38, Ithaca, NY, 200 pp. Reconstruction created using basemap from the. However, although climate change is predicted to enhance the intensity of severe weather, there is currently no way to calculate what effect climate change will have on the frequency of specific storm eventsfor example, we might see more powerful tornados, but we do not know if we will see more of them. Photo by Dr. David Goodrich, NOAA (NOAA Photo Library ID wea04192, NOAA's National Weather Service, via flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, image cropped and resized). Although much of the Southwest falls within the category of an arid zone, using a single label to describe the Southwest's climate would belie its diversity. Soils associated with these floodplains testify to the extreme seasonality of rainfall during that time. To provide more detailed information, each state has been divided into climate divisions, which are zones that share similar climate features. While this will help with the ongoing drought in the southwest, in many regions the precipitation deficit has been building for a long time. Parts of the Southwest are also experiencing long-term reductions in mountain snowpack (see the Snowpack indicator), which accounts for a large portion of the regions water supply. Global temperatures during the Cretaceous were very warm, as much as 10C (18F) above those at present. Photo by James St. John (flickr,Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, image cropped and resized). Thanks for visiting the North American Monsoon region with me! The reasons for this are complex and involve a combination factors. Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) tracks, Pleistocene, White Sands National Park, New Mexico. This map shows how the average air temperature from 2000 to 2020has differed from the long-term average (18952020). This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (ARPML-250637-OMLS-22).The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Precipitation, while sparse, peaks in the summer during the monsoonal storms, and again in the winter from storms originating in the Pacific Ocean. However, the Southwest is located between the mid-latitude and subtropical atmospheric circulation regimes, and this positioning relative to shifts in these . 2021. Regarding changes that have already occurred, the report finds modest evidence that the monsoon rainfall has intensified since the 1970s, and this has been partly attributed to greenhouse gas emissions. As the Triassic period began, the Southwest moved north from the equator. Winter will be warmer than normal, with above-normal precipitation. As the Cambrian progressed, North America moved northward, and what would become much of the southwestern U.S. was located near the Tropic of Capricorn. Deer mice are the most important rodent carriers of hantavirus in the Southwest. Submitted by rebecca.lindsey on Thu, 09/30/2021 - 10:14. Photo of USNM 166396 from the Cretaceous Atlas of Ancient Life(Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, image cropped). Yet this landscape actually supports a vast array of plants and animals, along with millions of people who call the Southwest home. ; Precipitation was above-average across portions of the Great Basin and Southwest, from the southern Plains to the Great Lakes and across much of the eastern U.S. Mississippi had its wettest summer on record with Alabama, Michigan, New York and Massachusetts . Fossils of a cycad (Dioonopsis praespinulosa) from the Paleocene Castle Rock Flora, Colorado. :https://earthathome.org/de/what-is-climate/, Digital Encyclopedia of Earth Science: Evidence for and causes of recent climate change:https://earthathome.org/de/recent-climate-change/, Digital Encyclopedia of Earth Science: Climate change mitigation: https://earthathome.org/de/climate-change-mitigation/, Digital Encyclopedia of Earth Science: Climate change adaptation: https://earthathome.org/de/climate-change-adaptation/, [emailprotected]: Quick guides & FAQ: Climate and Energy:https://earthathome.org/quick-faqs/#climate, [emailprotected]: Here on Earth: Introduction to Climate: https://earthathome.org/hoe/climate/. The daily range between maximum and minimum temperatures sometimes runs as much as 50 to 60 degrees F during the drier periods of the year. (2) In fact, comparing 1955, a year with very similar total rainfall in Tucson as this year, to this year shows temperature between July 1 and August 23 were on average more than 2 degrees F warmer. Photos by Lauren Dauphin, NASA Earth Observatory (used following NASA's image use policy). Photo credits: 1916 photo from USGS (public domain), 2013 photo by daveynin (flickr,Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, image resized). Positive values represent wetter-than-average conditions, while negative values represent drier-than-average conditions. Submitted by rebecca.lindsey on Thu, 09/30/2021 - 10:13. (3) There is a whole lot of interesting detail in this reportabout everything, but about the North American Monsoon specifically. But El Nio leads to more tropical storms than average, youre saying, because youre not new here. Summer rains fall almost entirely during brief but intense thunderstorms on the Great Plains, although the occasional hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico may push heavier precipitation inland. A blog about monitoring and forecasting El Nio, La Nia, and their impacts. While thats often the situation for the Indian monsoon, the monsoon in North America behaves a bit differently. A value between -2 and -3 indicates moderate drought, -3 to -4 is severe drought, and -4 or below indicates extreme drought. Volcanic activity was strong. Image fromCretaceous Atlas of Ancient Life: Western Interior Seaway(Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Internationallicense). Winter- The winter in the Southwest region is mild, and hot. Drier days and higher temperatures will amplify evaporation, increasing the desertification of already arid areas and affecting natural ecosystems as well as increasing pressure on the water supply for agriculture and cities. In southern New Mexico, Pleistocene fossil mammals are found that now live at higher elevations in the mountains of northern New Mexico, indicating cooler temperatures and more available moisture in the area during the late Pleistocene. He pointed out that ENSO does influence Pacific tropical storms, which can supply moisture to the monsoon. Utahs distance from both the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico prevents heavy precipitation, and much of the state is typically sunny year-round, with light to moderate winds. Flows in late summer are correspondingly reduced, leading to extra pressure on the states water supplies. Temperature and drought data come from a network of thousands of weather stations overseen by the National Weather Service. Photograph by Julia Manzerova (Flickr;Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license; image resized). All rights reserved. Summer temperatures on the South Rim, at 7000 feet (2134 meters), are especially pleasant from 50 to about 85 F (10s to 20s C). Tornado Alley is identified. Convective mixing forces the moisture in warm air to condense as it comes into contact with cool air, forming vapor (clouds) and precipitation (for example, rain or hail). The final ingredient is wind. Photo by Lane Pearman (flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, image cropped and resized). Source:FEMA National Risk Index. (2011)PLoS ONE3(7): e2791(Creative Commons Attribution license, image reorganized and resized).