Hence, it is tempting to view the Higgins et al. results as an advance of warm water up the coast, producing conditions favorable for convection as SSTs climb beyond a threshold value. To partially test this hypothesis, the data from this study was evaluated in a similar manner. However, both rainfall and SST information were plotted with respect to time and latitude to look for relationships between the timing of N. gulf warming and rainfall. Shown in Fig. Each point represents one of the gulf regions, identified by the latitude of the region's center.
Vertical bars are standard deviations.
This suggests, along with Fig. 12 and Fig. 14, that SSTs in the N. gulf are critical to the timing of monsoon rainfall in AZNM, and that the usual relative time delay for monsoon onset in Arizona, as observed in Fig. 15, may be attributed to a relative delay in the warming of the N. gulf. The results of this section support this idea. In addition, the results from Higgins et al.