Eleonora M. C. Demaria, Pieter Hazenberg, Russell L. Scott, Menberu B. Meles, Mary Nichols, David Goodrich

Geophysical Research Letters

Published date May 16, 2019

Intensification of the North American Monsoon Rainfall as Observed From a Long‐Term High‐Density Gauge Network

  • States that as the atmosphere gets warmer, rainfall intensification is expected across the planet with anticipated impacts on ecological and human systems
  • States that in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, the highly variable and localized nature of rainfall during the North American Monsoon makes it difficult to detect temporal changes in rainfall intensities in response to climatic change
  • Addresses the challenges introduced by the highly variable and localized nature of the rainfall by using the dense, subdaily, and daily observations from 59 rain gauges located in southeastern Arizona
  • Finds an intensification of monsoon subdaily rainfall intensities starting in the mid‐1970s that has not been observed in previous studies or simulated with high‐resolution climate models