The state's highest temperatures occur in the northeastern plains, where they can exceed 46C (115F). In addition, temperature increases and recent drought have resulted in earlier spring snowmelt and decreased snow cover on the lower slopes of high mountains, bringing about more rapid runoff and increased flooding. Left photoandright photoby NPS/Michael Quinn (Grand Canyon National Park via flickr,Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, images cropped and resized). In Utah, areas below 1200 meters (4000 feet) receive less than 25 centimeters (10 inches) per year, while higher elevations in the Wasatch Mountains receive more than 100 centimeters (40 inches). By the start of the Late Cretaceous, this inland sea, called the Western Interior Seaway, divided North America in two; the water was rich with mosasaurs, giant clams, and other marine life. Onion Creek salt diapir, a salt dome exposed at the surface at Fisher Towers, Utah. Layers of gypsum, an evaporate, from the Permian Castile Formation, Eddy County, New Mexico. The supercontinent was split by spreading along the mid-Atlantic ridge, initiating the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. He pointed out that ENSO does influence Pacific tropical storms, which can supply moisture to the monsoon. By the end of the Permian, the southern ice sheets had disappeared. Las Cruces is located in the Basin and Range region of New Mexico. If you live in the U.S. Southwest or northwestern Mexico, you may already be familiar with the annual climate phenomenon called the North American Monsoon, especially since rainfall in some spots has been way above average this summer. 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. Glaciers in the Colorado Rockies are sustained largely by avalanches and wind-blown snow. The Southwest contributes significantly to climate change. When you add in the sparse rain-gauge observations available in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, it becomes even more difficult to make confident statements about the effects of the monsoon and how it can be predicted. In New Mexico, climate is characterized by arid, semiarid, or continental conditions, with light precipitation, low humidity, and abundant sunshine. This chapter builds on assessments of climate change in the Southwest region from the three previous U.S. National Climate Assessments. Burning those fossil fuels releases carbon into the atmosphere, which warms the Earth. Right:Dolichometoppus productus. The globe about 485 million years ago, near the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary. The Southwest's overall average high temperature of 19.2C (66.6F) and average low of 2.8C (37.0F) are indicative of a varied climate, one much less uniform than that found in many other parts of the United States. This circulation brings thunderstorms and rainfall to the monsoon region, providing much of their annual total precipitation. Large glaciers were found at higher elevations, and temperatures were cool. Pangaea was completed when North America finally collided with Gondwana. Photo source:National Park Service (public domain). In 2020, Colorado ranked 7th in the nation for solar and wind power production, and Arizona and New Mexico ranked 12th and 13th, respectively. The oceans between Gondwana and North America began to close. Left:Jaw with teeth. Natural variability, changes in irrigation practices, and other diversions of water for human use can influence certain drought-related measurements. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Modified fromFigure 11 in Kirby et al. Thanks to the region's high temperatures and low precipitation levels from summer 2020 through summer 2021, the current drought has exceeded the severity of a late-1500s megadrought that previously had been identified by the same authors as the driest in 1,200 years. Shelly sandstones in Utah represent vast tidal flats. How would that result in less total JulyAugust rain? Good question! The full time series for precipitation and temperature values is shown in Figure 2. Photo by Jeffrey Beall (Wikimedia Commons,Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, image resized). Climate at a glance. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Regional overview Southwest. Figure by Emily Becker. Elevation does, however, play a key role in precipitation received throughout the Southwest. Center:As warm air rises, cool air sinks. Water, climate change, and sustainability in the Southwest. Image adapted from an image by Scenarios for Climate Assessment and Adaptation, first published in The Teacher-Friendly Guide to the Earth Science of the Southwestern US. Most models predict a decrease in winter and spring precipitation by the middle of the century, and more frequent precipitation extremes during the last half of the century. Global temperatures fell further in the late Miocene thanks to the formation of the Himalayas. The final ingredient is wind. 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. Seems likely that conditions in the GM may influence annual variations in the monsoon. But El Nio leads to more tropical storms than average, youre saying, because youre not new here. Wetter-than-average monsoons (green dots) are slightly more common during La Nia years, while drier-than-average monsoons (brown dots) are slightly more common during El Nio years. temperatures from Washington and northern Oregon along the northern tier of the. Thanks for visiting the North American Monsoon region with me! Accessed March 2021. www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag. The Drought Monitor is a more recent and more detailed index based on several other indices (including Palmer), along with additional factors such as snow water content, groundwater levels, reservoir storage, pasture/range conditions, and other impacts. A car with a windshield damaged by hailstones, Limon, Colorado, 2010. Left:Lake Bonneville's maximal extent during the Pleistocene. The Southwest experiences nearly every variety of extreme weather; heat snaps and cold waves, droughts, floods, blizzards, and even tornados are all considerations for residents of the southwestern states. Southwestern states are stepping up their use and production of renewable energy. Summer temperatures on the South Rim, at 7000 feet (2134 meters), are especially pleasant from 50 to about 85 F (10s to 20s C). Precipitation accumulation over the past 12 months, shown as a percent of the average mid-August through mid-August total. Recent warming within the Southwest has been among the most rapid in the United States, and models predict that the area's climate will continue to warm. (Going forward, to avoid having to say northwestern Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico over and over, Ill refer to this area as the monsoon region.). Although the mountain building that occurred during this event was mostly far to the east, the Southwest was influenced by both fluctuating sea levels and a few significant tectonic changes. Some regions have received more than 200% of the average rainfall, and Tucson recorded its wettest month ever this July. After the end-Cretaceous bolide impact, the climate may have cooled briefly, but it soon rebounded to a warmer state. The American Southwest, here defined as the area between 95W and 125W and 25N and 40N, 9 covers over four million square kilometers. At the very end of the Cretaceous, the Gulf Coast experienced an enormous disruption when a large asteroid or bolide collided with Earth in what is now the northern Yucatn Peninsula in Mexico. One especially alarming detail about the Calf Canyon fire is that it was originally set in January 2022. Winter is the driest season in New Mexico, because precipitation from eastward-traveling Pacific storms is left behind in the western mountains of Arizona and Utah. The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary at Trinidad Lake State Park, Las Animas County, Colorado. The Southwest is typically dry, hot, and humid. This section covers the climate of the southwestern U.S. through the Phanerozoic, from about 541 million years ago to the recent. Climate change is affecting the Southwest's water resources, terrestrial ecosystems, coastal and marine environments, agriculture, and energy supply. Changes in atmospheric pressure during the late fall and winter can lead to an accumulation of haze. The distance between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, New Mexico, is about 65 kilometers (about 40.5 miles). The Palmer Index is calculated from precipitation and temperature measurements at weather stations, and has been used widely for many years. Photo by Kenneth Carpenter (Wikimedia Commons,Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, image cropped and resized). Thick salt deposits accumulated in the northwestern Four Corners area as the seas evaporated. All rights reserved. At this time, the Southwest was still submerged. It smoldered beneath the ground as a dormant holdover, sleeper, or zombie fire until April, when it flared up and grew into a wildfire, an almost unprecedented occurrence in the Southwest. Image by The High Fin Sperm Whale, created from images by NOAA National Weather Service training material (Wikimedia Commons, public domain). The location of the Southwest and the topographical extremes across this area strongly influence its weather. Forecasts had all of this widespread flash flooding. By 2070, one can expect up to 38 more days of freeze-free weather each year. Answer: Winter, June, July, and August. Photograph by Bill Morrow (Flickr;Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license). The coldest periods will be in late November, mid- and late December, and mid-January. Despite the areas arid climate, the dunes were surprisingly full of life, particularly in southeastern Utah. Photo by Richard Stephen Haynes (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, image resized). For example, high winter temperatures between 2000 and 2003 correlated to bark beetle outbreaks that devastated pinyon pine throughout the Southwest, leading to nearly 90% mortality at some sites in Colorado and Arizona. Its largely too soon to tell. In fact, this monsoon may turn out to be the wettest on record for some places! 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. By early to mid-September, wind patterns have generally reverted back to the westerly pattern, bringing an end to the monsoon. Photo by Center for Land Use Interpretation(Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license, image resized). Southwest Increased heat, drought, and insect outbreaks, all linked to climate change, have increased wildfires. This fire, which started as two separate fires that merged, began in April 2022 and has since burned more than 138,000 hectares (340,000 acres) of land and over 300 homes. 2. In the Southwest, average precipitation ranges from only 34 centimeters (13.4 inches) in Utah to 39.9 centimeters (15.7 inches) in Colorado, which reflects the area's general aridity. Precipitation forms. Right:Sabalites, a palm leaf. Right:Graph of the lake's changing level over time. Winter precipitation often involves large-scale frontal systems. While most of the evidence for cooling at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary comes from the deep sea, fossil mammals in the Rocky Mountains show clear evidence of a change from forests to grasslands, which is associated with global cooling. Climate models project a significant increase in the number of days over 95F per year across the Southeast. Brown indicates areas where experts forecast drought will persist or worsen. Shallow seas invaded the continent, ultimately covering the whole area until the late Carboniferous. Trees killed by bark beetles at Cameron Pass, Colorado, 2011. With the start of the Paleozoic era, climates across the world were warm, and North America was located in the low and warmer latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The size and location of various lakes in which the Green River Formation sediments were deposited during the Eocene epoch. The Southwest relies on the slow melt of mountain snowpack throughout the spring and summer, when water demands are highest. Streamflow totals for the decade of 2001-2010 in the Great Basin, Rio Grande, and Colorado River were between 5% and 37% lower than their 20. For southern and western Colorado, the intrusions of moist air are most common from mid July into September associated with wind patterns sometimes called the Southwest Monsoon. The reasons for this are complex and involve a combination factors. Reconstruction created using basemap from thePALEOMAP PaleoAtlas for GPlatesand the PaleoData Plotter Program, PALEOMAP Project by C. R. Scotese (2016); map annotations by Jonathan R. Hendricks and Elizabeth J. Hermsen for PRI's[emailprotected]project (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0license). Some areas were more than 2F warmer than average (see Figure 1). SUMMARY OF THE OUTLOOK FOR NON-TECHNICAL USERS. Also, these favourable weather conditions usually occur more. Pacific storms lose most of their moisture as they pass over the Rocky Mountains, so much of the Southwest's winter precipitation falls as snow within the areas mountainous regions. Time-series graph of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from southwestern states, showing rising emissions from 1970 to around 2008, followed by a decreasing trend from 2008 to 2019. Brown indicates where precipitation has been less than average; green is greater than average. Agriculture accounts for more than half of the Southwests water use, so any major reduction in the availability of water resources will create a serious strain on ecosystems and populations. This may be due to the growth of solar energy, and voluntary commitments to reduce emissions made by large utility companies in the state. These oases were fed by groundwater that originated in the higher country of what is now western Colorado. For example San Diego county has a population of azalea otherwise not seen for hundreds of miles to the north. Temperature and drought data come from a network of thousands of weather stations overseen by the National Weather Service. The satellite loop in this post shows Gulf of Mexico moisture moving west into the monsoon region. Famous sheriffs like Wyatt Earp and outlaws like Billy the . The lack of moisture in the air allows heat trapped in the earth during daylight hours to rapidly radiate away, leading to cool evenings. In New Mexico, for example, the average difference between the daily high and low temperatures ranges from 14 to 19C (25 to 35F). Arizona monsoon cloud with lightning striking the beautiful Sonoran desert in North Scottsdale. A blog about monitoring and forecasting El Nio, La Nia, and their impacts. For extended periods from 2002 to 2005 and from 2012 to2020, nearly the entire region was abnormally dry or even drier (see Figure 2). Rugose corals or horn corals (Turbophyllum) from the Mississippian Great Blue Limestone, Cache Canyon, northern Utah, near the border between the Basin and Range and Rocky Mountain physiographic provinces.
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