Moisture transport related to the ENSO effects in the Mexican precipitation

In the past, several works addressed the impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on Mexican precipitation by using relative scarce observations of the National Weather Service of Mexico or reanalysis data. In this work, we reassessed the ENSO signal in Mexican rainfall by using four precipitation databases (CHIRPS, GPCC, GPCP and CMAP) over a 34-yr period (1981-2014) and three different ENSO indices. Results obtained with different datasets are consistent among them and with previous studies, showing strong positive precipitation anomalies along the winter over the northern Mexico for El Niño events. In contrast, during the summer, negative rainfall anomalies can be found over most of central and southern Mexico, being stronger in August. During La Niña years, the anomalies show approximately the opposite pattern to those observed during El Niño.

A Lagrangian approach is used to track the evaporation minus precipitation (E-P) along trajectories followed by the atmospheric particles that will take precipitable water to the areas with a precipitation amount modulated by ENSO phases. Then, composites of the obtained (E-P) fields are examined for the strong phases of El Niño and La Niña. Finally, the synoptic conditions associated with ENSO-related anomalous atmospheric water vapor fluxes are studied for a better understanding of the origin of the ENSO impact on the Mexican precipitation.