Monsoon forecast: A case for optimism

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Monsoon rains are a welcome guest in the Southwest, helping to suppress scorching temperatures and delivering nearly half of the yearly rainfall for parts of Arizona. (Photo by Zack Guido)

The official monsoon forecast for the Southwest looks to be more vigorous than average, with a strong beginning and end. The season begins in July and runs through September.

The North American monsoon, the fickle phenomenon that is the summer rainy season in the Southwest, is forecast to be more vigorous than average, with a strong beginning and end. During most years, the July through September rainy season forecast for Arizona and New Mexico is no better than a coin flip. But not this summer, when increasing confidence has caused forecasters to paint a more optimistic picture – good news for a region that has been caught in the throes of severe drought for more than 18 months.
"The ecosystem is so tuned up to summer moisture that an early, consistent monsoon can stimulate a robust growing season and provide short-term drought relief," said Mike Crimmins, a climate extension specialist at the University of Arizona.
Crimmins, along with other UA and national experts, share the methodologies and challenges in forecasting the upcoming monsoon season. 
Forecasting challengesForecasting the monsoon is no easy task. Experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center, known as the CPC, mine 41 different analysis tools, from global climate models that incorporate atmospheric physics to historical relationships between rainfall and the state of El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a natural force that influences climate and weather around the globe.
In May, conflicting evidence in many of these tools created doubt about the strength and onset of the 2012 summer rains, resulting in an "equal chances" forecast that the monsoon would be above, below or near average.
"I tried hard to put something on the map because we know most people think [equal chances] is a non-forecast," said Jon Gottschalck, head of forecast operations at the CPC. "When I was making [the forecast in May], the signals were all over the place."

Uncertainty in the monsoon is the norm. The CPC has stamped an equal chances forecast on the Southwest in 12 of the last 17 years. Part of the forecasting challenge lies in geography: Arizona and New Mexico sit on the northern fringes of the core North American monsoon region, which is centered over the Sierra Madre Occidental in northwest Mexico. As a result, many climate factors come into play and cause high year-to-year and month-to-month variability. 
"Sea surface temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, snow cover in the Rocky Mountains, the state of El Niño-Southern Oscillation, dry conditions in the Midwest and tropical storm activity have all been stated to influence the monsoon during different times and places of the season," Crimmins said.
Optimistic outlooksIn June, forecast models and other analysis tools became strong enough to slightly nudge the optimism of CPC forecasters.
"Our main climate model has been doing very well in recent years and has shown some accuracy in forecasting the monsoon during the first month," said David Unger, a CPC meteorologist. "There is some indication that July will be above average, and even if the final two months are average, there is still a good chance for a wet monsoon."
It is still a cautious forecast; the odds are only slightly better than equal chances that about half of Arizona and New Mexico will get a healthy dousing. Also, the CPC model has shown little accuracy forecasting August and September with more than a 30-day lead time, and so these months remain a black box to the CPC.
"Monsoon forecasting over the season is so difficult," Gottschalck said. "July through September is a long period, and a lot can happen. Anything early on could be completely outweighed by the final two months."
Despite CPC uncertainty in much of the monsoon, a strong start favors an above average season. Another forecast, based on past summers that most resemble current and expected conditions, also bolsters this outlook.
"The bottom line is that when we look at our analog forecast, it is for a wet July, a so-so August and a wet September," said Art Douglass, professor and chair of the department of atmospheric sciences at Creighton University.
Douglass, who has been forecasting the monsoon since 1977, developed this outlook by analyzing 12 variables that span the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, including sea surface temperatures, sea level pressure, pressure levels in the atmosphere, and tropical convection.
Five summers on record –1984, 1986, 2001, 2006 and 2008 – had very similar conditions to those in June. When combined, most of Arizona and New Mexico received more than 110 percent of average during these summers.
"When you composite these years, it's a pretty optimistic forecast for rain," Douglass said.
Monsoon by monthThe strings guiding Douglass' forecast are tethered to conditions in the Midwest and Pacific Ocean. Research in the late 1980s, for example, found a strong correlation between dry conditions in the Midwest, centered over Iowa, and wet weather over the Southwest and northern Mexico during the initial weeks of the summer rainy season.
"If you're interested in what's going on in the southwestern U.S., you also better be interested in what's going on in the Midwest," Douglass said. "And if you start looking at lags, it's the Midwest that seems to be behaving first."
The Midwest has been dry for the past three months, with many parts of the region receiving less than 70 percent of average. The sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean have been recently warming and also favor an early and wet onset.
"This year, sea surface temperatures look nearly identical to last year," said Christopher Castro, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the UA. "This would suggest an early to average start with average to above-average precipitation from late June to early July."
El Niño also figures into the mix. Sea surface temperatures are currently near average, but many El Niño-Southern Oscillation forecasts project El Niño will develop by late summer.
During El Niño summers, conditions in August tend to be dry, Douglass said. Generally, this occurs because the subtropical jet intensifies as sea surface temperatures warm. This, in turn, pulls the monsoon high south, exposing southern Arizona and New Mexico to the dry northern side of this high.
As for September, El Niño conditions tend to increase the frequency of tropical Pacific Ocean storms, which can squeeze moist air from the Gulf of California into the Southwest. The intensifying subtropical jet and waning solar radiation also creates a conduit that helps steer storms into the region.
But there are no guarantees that El Niño will evolve in this manner, Douglass said. It's a forecast based solely on historical data.
Nonetheless, after two consecutive dry winters that sandwiched a lackluster monsoon for many parts of the Southwest, optimism is a welcome guest. If the forecasts prove accurate, the monsoon will help squelch dry conditions that have been plaguing the region.
The recent thunderstorms in southern Arizona on June 16 had a monsoon flavor, suggesting an early and strong beginning. The storms could also be a false start, as they sometimes have been in the past, proving again that the monsoon is a fickle phenomenon.

Something new, something bubbly

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LIFE'S OUTTAKES
By Daris HowardGazette Contributor
            When I answered the phone, I recognized the voice on the other end as belonging to one of the executive secretaries at the university where I work.
            “Professor Howard,” she said, “I understand that you know Russian?”
            “I have studied it for two years,” I responded, “but I’m not sure that constitutes knowing it.”
            “That’s better than most,” she replied. “You have probably heard that we have a girls’ choir coming from Novosibirsk, Russia, and I’m sure you know about Novosibirsk.”
            I told her that I had heard about the choir, and did indeed know of Novosibirsk. Novosibirsk, a large city deep in Siberia, consisted almost entirely of scientists and their families. Most of the work done there was secretive and, therefore, it had been a closed city. Very few outsiders were allowed in, and almost no citizens were allowed out. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and democratic changes, that city was opening up.
            “Well, we have run into a slight problem,” the secretary continued. “These girls have almost never been outside of Novosibirsk. The outside world will be very different to them. Instead of putting them up in hotels, we hoped to have hosts families that could show them what we are like, and perhaps share some of the fun things from our country with them. Since you have had a little Russian and could communicate with them, we were wondering if you might host some of them.” 
            I talked to my wife, and we agreed that it might be fun, especially since we had teenage daughters of our own. So the university scheduled for us to have four of the girls stay with us.
            We planned a lot for the day. Our daughters helped us decide that the foods should be pizza, lasagna, Twinkies, and Ding Dongs. We bought them each a shirt that had “Idaho” on it, and we also prepared lots of fun activities.
            The evening finally arrived, and the whole family went to pick them up. When we met the girls that would be staying with us, our children were not ready for the kiss on the cheek they used as a greeting. Even I, knowing that was their custom, had not prepared myself.
            That night we had a big pizza party, and, of course, we had lots of pop. When we first showed them the pop, the girls were slightly concerned. “Vodka?” one of them asked. I shook my head and tried to tell them it was pop. “Nyet. Eta soda’” (No. It is soda).
            One girl smiled. “Oh. Coca-Cola.” I learned she had tasted that once on a short trip away from home. We opened all sorts of pop so they could taste them. The girl who had tried Coca Cola poured a full glass from one of them, and she gulped it down. Suddenly she let out a huge, uncontrollable burp and started to giggle. That convinced the other girls it was vodka for sure. But after some time, with the first girl’s urging, and due to the fact she didn’t appear drunk, other than burping and giggling, they all eventually tried some.
            Having never had anything like it before, it had an especially profound effect on them. They would try to hold the burp in only to have it come out their nose. One of them, speaking in Russian, said “If I don’t burp, my nose does.”
            All of our other activities went out the window as we, instead, spent the evening letting them drink lots of pop, burp, and laugh while we laughed at their delight.
            As a group they drank three two-liter pitchers of pop. When it was time to go to bed, we passed around the Twinkies and Ding Dongs. The delight in each girl’s eyes as she bit into them was well worth the expense.
            They all hugged us good night, and then one said, in broken English, “America funny place. I much like.”
            And with that they went to bed, only to learn the other effect of a lot of pop - being in the bathroom most of the night.

 (Daris Howard, award-winning, syndicated columnist, playwright, and author, can be contacted at daris@darishoward.com; or visit his website at http://www.darishoward.com)

Real patriots pay their fair share

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By Robert ReichRobert Reich's Blogreadersupportednews.org 26 June 12
ecently I publicly debated a regressive Republican who said Arizona and every other state should use whatever means necessary to keep out illegal immigrants. He also wants English to be spoken in every classroom in the nation, and the pledge of allegiance recited every morning. "We have to preserve and protect America," he said. "That's the meaning of patriotism."
To my debating partner and other regressives, patriotism is about securing the nation from outsiders eager to overrun us. That's why they also want to restore every dollar of the $500 billion in defense cuts scheduled to start in January.
Yet many of these same regressives have no interest in preserving or protecting our system of government. To the contrary, they show every sign of wanting to be rid of it.In fact, regressives in Congress have substituted partisanship for patriotism, placing party loyalty above loyalty to America.
The GOP's highest-ranking member of Congress has said his "number one aim" is to unseat President Obama. For more than three years congressional Republicans have marched in lockstep, determined to do just that. They have brooked no compromise.
They couldn't care less if they mangle our government in pursuit of their partisan aims. Senate Republicans have used the filibuster more frequently in this Congress than in any congress in history.
House Republicans have been willing to shut down the government and even risk the full faith and credit of the United States in order to get their way.
Regressives on the Supreme Court have opened the floodgates to unlimited money from billionaires and corporations overwhelming our democracy, on the bizarre theory that money is speech under the First Amendment and corporations are people.
Regressive Republicans in Congress won't even support legislation requiring the sources of this money-gusher be disclosed.
They've even signed a pledge - not of allegiance to the United States, but of allegiance to Grover Norquist, who has never been elected by anyone. Norquist's "no-tax" pledge is interpreted only by Norquist, who says closing a tax loophole is tantamount to raising taxes and therefore violates the pledge.
True patriots don't hate the government of the United States. They're proud of it. Generations of Americans have risked their lives to preserve it. They may not like everything it does, and they justifiably worry when special interests gain too much power over it. But true patriots work to improve the U.S. government, not destroy it.
But regressive Republicans loathe the government - and are doing everything they can to paralyze it, starve it, and make the public so cynical about it that it's no longer capable of doing much of anything. Tea Partiers are out to gut it entirely. Norquist says he wants to shrink it down to a size it can be "drowned in a bathtub."
When arguing against paying their fair share of taxes, wealthy regressives claim "it's my money." But it's their nation, too. And unless they pay their share America can't meet the basic needs of our people. True patriotism means paying for America.
So when regressives talk about "preserving and protecting" the nation, be warned: They mean securing our borders, not securing our society. Within those borders, each of us is on our own. They don't want a government that actively works for all our citizens.
Their patriotism is not about coming together for the common good. It is about excluding outsiders who they see as our common adversaries.

---

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including "Locked in the Cabinet," "Reason," "Supercapitalism," "Aftershock," and his latest e-book, "Beyond Outrage." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

$65 million in Rx savings for AZ Medicare

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As a result of the Affordable Care Act, seniors and people with disabilities in Arizona have saved a total of $65,803,605 on prescription drugs since the law was enacted.  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) also released data today showing that in the first five months of 2012, 12,981 people with Medicare in Arizona saved a total of $8,921,509 on prescription drugs in “donut hole” coverage gap for an average of $687 in savings this year.
“Thanks to the health care law, millions of people with Medicare have been paying less for prescription drugs,” said CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.  “The law is helping people with Medicare lower their medical costs, and giving them more resources to stay healthy.  By 2020, the donut hole will be fully closed thanks to the Affordable Care Act.”
Nationwide, since the Affordable Care Act was passed, more than 5,254,000 people with Medicare have saved over $3.7 billion on prescription drugs in the donut hole.  This includes new data for the first five months of 2012, when more than 745,000 people with Medicare saved an average of $651 on the prescription drugs, for a total of $485.3 million in savings.
These savings are automatically applied to drugs that people with Medicare purchase, after they hit the Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage gap or “donut hole.”
People with Medicare who hit the donut hole in 2010 received a one-time $250 rebate.  In 2011, people with Medicare began receiving a 50 percent discount on covered brand name drugs and 7 percent coverage of generic drugs in the donut hole.  This year, Medicare coverage for generic drugs in the coverage gap has risen to 14 percent.  Coverage for both brand name and generic drugs in the gap will continue to increase over time until 2020, when the coverage gap will no longer exist.  
For more information on how the Affordable Care Act closes the Medicare drug benefit coverage gap “donut hole,” please visit: http://www.healthcare.gov/law/features/65-older/drug-discounts/index.html
For State-by-State information on the amount of savings people with Medicare have received in the donut hole, please visit: https://www.cms.gov/Plan-PaymentCached

Scalia's dissent says Brewer didn't win

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FROM TODAY'S AZ REPUBLIC
Letter to the Editor:"How you know you didn't win on SB1070"
To Jan, Russell, John and David and all the other's trying to spin the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling on Arizona's Senate Bill 1070.
If you are a conservative and Antonin Scalia writes the dissenting opinion in a Supreme Court case of yours, you didn't win.
Jim ManosGlendale
You don't have to get it from us.  You can get your own subscription to the Republic by calling 1-800-332-6733.  It's the best newspaper value in the Rim Country.

Kenyans Don't Always Want Your Old Clothes

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I believe in recycling. But we kid ourselves sometimes about how effective it is.

Take those bins for recycling plastic bags that are in supermarkets nowadays. Are they really about saving plastic stock, or are they chiefly a defense against anti-plastic bag laws.

"Look, we care! We're recycling!"

Supposedly they go into plastic decking. or into more plastic bags, but if the market dropped—especially in China, which is entering its own recession—they would probably going to landfill while we keep stuffing more of them into the collection boxes.

Then there's clothes. We drop them at Goodwill or Salvation Army or ARC, knowing that people with little money to spend—or college students looking for something ironically retro—will buy them.

Or not. The fact is, there are more used garments than buyers. So they go to a different kind of recycler.

There are thousands of secondhand textile processors in the United States today, mostly small family businesses, many of them several generations old. I visited Trans- Americas Trading Co., a third- generation textile recycler in Clifton, N.J., which employs 85 people and processes close to 17 million pounds of used clothing a year. Inside Trans-Americas, there is a wall of cubed-up clothing five bales tall and more than 20 bales long. “This is liter­ally several hundred thousand pounds of textile waste, and we bring in two trailer loads of this much every day,” Trans-Americas president Eric Stubin told me. The volume they process has gone up over the years alongside our consumption of clothing.

Without textile recyclers, charities would be totally beleaguered and forced to throw away everything that couldn’t be sold. Charities might even have to turn us away. The only benefit to this doomsday scenario is that our clothes would pile up in our house or in landfills, finally forcing us to face down just how much clothing waste we cre­ate. . . . . After the prized vintage is plucked out and the outcasts are sent to the fiber and wiping rag companies, the remaining clothing is sorted, shrink-wrapped, tied up, baled, and sold to used-clothing ven­dors around the world. The secondhand clothing industry has been export-oriented almost since the introduction of mass-produced gar­ments. And by one estimate, used clothing is now the United States’ number one export by volume, with the overwhelming majority sent to ports in sub-Saharan Africa. 

But even poor Africans do not want or cannot use it all. Now when every little kid in the smallest village in the bush has a Chicago Bulls shirt, what happens to the rest?

Read the rest.

More New Mexico Barbies

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Socorro Barbie: Now an occasional tour guide to the Trinity Site, she comes with a roadhouse music CD and a waitress uniform. Favorite pastime is to park out by the Very Large Array, drink, and get nostalgic or regretful depending on circumstances.  Optional Ford Ranger pickup and Barbie Dream Quonset available.

Los Alamos Barbie: This Barbie is a homemaker who makes Martha Stewart look lazy.  Head of the PTA and the carpool driver to all after school events. Comes with a maxed-out Hobby Lobby credit card, a Dodge Caravan, and your choice of either Workaholic Ken or Pussywhipped Ken. Used to be classified, but was mistakenly leaked a few years ago.

Española Barbie: This recently paroled Barbie comes with a 9mm handgun, bowie knife, ‘78 El Camino with tinted windows, and a DIY meth-lab kit. El Camino may be traded at any time for a Chevy lowrider. This model is only available after dark and can only be bought with cash, preferably small bills.  Unless you are a cop. Then we don't know what you are talking about.  Hairspray and fake fingernails sold separately.

Read the rest.

Earlier models here.