CLLJ and WHWP heat content as a constrain to North American Monsoon activation moisture supply

With a well defined long term basis analysis of moisture supply to the North American Monsoon (NAM) domain based upon FLEXPART Lagrangian trajectories, the role of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico as the primary moisture source for the monsoon onset is analyzed. Regardless the NAM area requires the input from other sources, it is the eastern source which provides the required supply to activate the land moisture processes. Here we study how the warm SSTs of the WHWP enclosed region increase the moisture content, modulate the depth of the boundary layer and to which extent the CLLJ is able to advect the moist air towards the eastern Sierra Madre region. The analysis focuses on how different these processes are for warm and cold ENSO events and the relevance of this variability mode as a control of the meridional rainfall distribution across tropical north America under ENSO forcing. For this analysis, a different approach for the WHWP characterization is implemented as a new volume heat content definition is used for the WHWP instead of the traditional area defined index.