Tracking the Monsoon in the Southwest U.S.

Tracking the Monsoon in the Southwest U.S.

The North American monsoon provides up to 50% of the annual rainfall in Arizona and New Mexico but also leads to extreme weather impacts. Monsoon precipitation is difficult to forecast and analyze, leading CLIMAS to develop the Monsoon Tracker, a centralized data repository that integrates multiple data sources, including citizen rainfall reports. Featured on the National Weather Service website, the Monsoon Tracker supports flood control, storm recovery, and forecasting efforts. Additional resources include Monsoon Season Station Summaries and daily precipitation maps that visualize storm intensity, frequency, and seasonal precipitation anomalies across Arizona and New Mexico.

"There's very little programming that we can do on the back end [of our website] to add the data sets we need to help track the monsoon. That's where CLIMAS gets involved and it's a big, key component of this. CLIMAS can bring in data and repackage it in a way that's actually useful, that we technically can't do. They bring a lot of technical expertise that we just don't have and we aren't going to be able to mimic."

- Tom Dang, National Weather Service Tucson

CLIMAS Leads: Ben McMahan, Michael Crimmins 

Research Team: Rey Granillo, William Holmgren, Ramon Driesen, Hsin-I Chang, Tony Lorenzo, Ryan Dennis, Patrick Bunn, Gabe McGowan, Mau Herrera, Benni Delgado, CJ Larsen, Dharma Hoy

Partners: NOAA National Weather Service - Tucson

Publications

Guido, Z., McMahan, B., Hoy, D., Larsen, C., Delgado, B., Granillo, R. L., & Crimmins, M. (2023). Public Engagement on Weather and Climate with a Monsoon Fantasy Forecasting Game. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 104(1), E249–E256. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0003.1 

Crimmins, M. A., McMahan, B., Holmgren, W. F., & Woodard, G. (2021). Tracking precipitation patterns across a western U.S. metropolitan area using volunteer observers: RainLog.Org. International Journal of Climatology, 41(8), 4201–4214. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7067

McMahan, B., Granillo, R. L., Delgado, B., Herrera, M., & Crimmins, M. A. (2021). Curating and Visualizing Dense Networks of Monsoon Precipitation Data: Integrating Computer Science Into Forward Looking Climate Services Development. Frontiers in Climate, 3, 602573. https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.602573

McGowan, G. (2019). Geospatial analysis and quality control of monsoon season precipitation data from citizen reporters near Tucson, Arizona. University of Arizona.