The extent to which soil water storage can support an average dry season evapotranspiration (ET) is investigated using observations from the Rebio Jarú site for the period of 2000 to 2002. During the dry season, when total rainfall is less than 100 mm, the soil moisture storage available to root uptake in the top 3-m layer is sufficient to maintain the ET rate, which is equal to or higher than ...

Based on the University of Utah Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation feature (PF) database, tropical cyclone PFs (TCPFs) are identified for over 600 storms that reached tropical storm intensity level or above around the globe during eight TC seasons from the period of 1998–2006. Each TC season includes 6 months yr. Six basins are considered: Atlantic (ATL), east-central Paci...

The South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) is the largest rainband in the Southern Hemisphere and provides most of the rainfall to southwest Pacific island nations. In spite of various modelling efforts, it remains uncertain how the SPCZ will respond to greenhouse warming. Using a hierarchy of climate models we show that the uncertainty of SPCZ rainfall projections in present-generation climate ...

This study investigates temporal relationships between vegetation growth, rainfall, and soil moisture for six sites located in sub-Saharan and southern Africa for the period 2005-2009. Specifically, seasonal components of time series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) composites from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and ...

It is widely recognised that the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) in south-eastern Australia has been in the grip of a serious drought for many years. Over the period 1997−2006, mean annual rainfall has been approximately 16 percent lower than the long-term (1895−2006) average across the MDB. Runoff has been 39 percent lower over the same period. The continuing drought in the MDB has brought the need...

Understanding the intensity and duration of tropical rain events is critical to modelling the rate and timing of wetcanopy evaporation, the suppression of transpiration, the generation of infiltration-excess overland flow and hence to erosion, and to river responsiveness. Despite this central role, few studies have addressed the characteristics of equatorial rainstorms. This study analyses rain...

The coupling of hydrological distributed models to numerical weather prediction outputs is an important issue for hydrological applications such as forecasting of flood events. Downscaling meteorological predictions to the hydrological scales requires the resolution of two fundamental issues regarding precipitation, namely, (1) understanding the statistical properties and scaling laws of rainfa...

[1] A statistical relationship between spring Arctic sea ice concentration (SIC) and Chinese summer rainfall is identified using singular value decomposition (SVD). Results show that decreased (increased) spring SIC in the Arctic Ocean and the Greenland Sea corresponds to increased (decreased) summer rainfall in northeast China and central China between the Yangtze River and the Yellow River (2...

[1] By diagnosing the 3-hourly North American Regional Reanalysis rainfall data set for the 1979–2003 period, it is illustrated that the eastward propagation of convection systems from the Rockies to the Great Plains plays an essential role for the warm season climate over the central U.S. This eastward propagating mode could be the deciding factor for the observed nocturnal rainfall peak over ...

[1] Previous observational studies have identified three different types of diurnal precipitation variation over the conterminous U.S.: localized afternoon rainfall maxima over the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, propagating mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) from the Rocky Mountain region, and propagating MCSs over the Appalachian Mountains. This study focuses on the second type, which involves...