Dataset from: Mechanical forcing of the North American monsoon by orography

<p>The core of the North American monsoon consists of a band of intense rainfall along the west coast of Mexico, commonly thought to be caused by thermal forcing from both land and the elevated terrain of that region.&nbsp; Here we use observations, a global climate model, and stationary wave solutions to show that this rainfall maximum is instead generated when Mexico&#39;s Sierra Madre mountains mechanically force an adiabatic stationary wave by diverting extratropical eastward winds toward the equator; eastward, upslope flow in that wave lifts warm and moist air to produce convective rainfall.&nbsp; Land surface heat fluxes do precondition the atmosphere for convection, particularly in summer afternoons, but these heat fluxes alone are insufficient for producing the observed rainfall maximum.&nbsp; These results, together with dynamical structures in observations and models, indicate that the core monsoon should be understood as convectively enhanced orographic rainfall in a mechanically forced stationary wave, not as a classic, thermally forced tropical monsoon.&nbsp; This has implications for the response of the North American monsoon to past and future global climate change, making trends in jet stream interactions with orography of central importance.</p>