Very high resolution precipitation climatologies from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission precipitation radar

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Abstract

To investigate processes related to the interaction of topography and precipitation, a tropics-wide (±36° latitude) high resolution (0.1°) ten year (1998-2007) rainfall climatology is presented from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) using algorithm 2A25 version 6 near-surface rain. We observe a tight coupling between precipitation and topography with distinct precipitation-topography relationships present in northwest South America and South Asia. An error model is developed by subsampling the TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis as sampled by the PR. The error model predicts observed sampling error as a function of resolution, rain rate and sampling frequency with an r2 of 0.82. This error model indicates that the precipitation climatology at 0.1° resolution does resolve precipitation gradients in regions with large average daily rain totals including die Andes. Western Ghats, and Himalaya.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numberL15815
JournalGeophysical Research Letters
Volume36
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 16 2009

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geophysics
  • General Earth and Planetary Sciences

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