News

On September 10-11, 25 scientists and natural resource managers met at the offices of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), in El Paso, Texas.  Their goal was to use strategic scenario planning techniques to gain insight into environmental and natural resource planning under highly uncertain conditions. Participants included climatologists, meteorologists, geologists, hydrologists, ecologists, biologists, and environmental economists, representing a range of U.S. and Mexican federal agencies, state agencies, universities, and non-governmental organizations. (read more)

Next up in our new series featuring video mini-segments from the podcast.  This segment comes from the September 2014 SW Climate Podcast - and covers the impacts of Norbert and Odile in the Southwest - as part of the 2014 Eastern Pacific Tropical Storm Season (read more)

Next up in our new series featuring video mini-segments from the podcast.  This segment comes from the September 2014 SW Climate Podcast - and covers ENSO models and El Niño forecasts (read more)

Looking back on the 2014 monsoon, a simple characterization of the season as ‘normal’ or ‘average’ (or above or below these thresholds) is difficult, given the spatial and temporal variability of monsoon storms. The cumulative seasonal totals provide one way of characterizing the monsoon, and by those metrics, the Southwest saw an average to above-average summer rainy season, with much of Arizona and New Mexico receiving well above-average rainfall. (read more)

This post was originally published as part of the October 2014 Southwest Climate Outlook

An El Niño Watch, issued by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC), continues for the seventh consecutive month as signs of an emerging El Niño are just on the horizon, but not quite here yet. Another slug of warm water (also known as a Kelvin wave), has been making its way across the Pacific Ocean from west to east just below the surface and is poised to emerge and help warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific over the next month or so...(read more)

This post was originally published as part of the October 2014 Southwest Climate Outlook

Next up in our new series featuring video mini-segments from the podcast.  This segment comes from the September 2014 SW Climate Podcast - and covers Tropical Storm Climatology in the Southwest (read more)

September turned out to be quite a month as far as extreme monsoon season weather across Arizona. The month started out rather quiet as the monsoon ridge of high pressure weakened and a trough of low pressure to the north ushered in dry air from the west across the state. This suppressed thunderstorm activity for several days until the monsoon ridge pushed back north helping to bring low level moisture back into the region.  (read more)