The diurnal cycle of precipitation over South America and how preceding soil moisture conditions can affect precipitation events

GILES, JULIÁN; RUSCICA, ROMINA; MENÉNDEZ CLAUDIO G.

Canmore

Conferencia; GEWEX 8th Open Science Conference; 2018

GEWEX

Analysis of the diurnal cycle of precipitation (DCP) over SouthAmerica are still relatively scarce.The DCP  is especially difficult to reproduce inclimate models. Satellite derived products offer 3h precipitation data withhigh spatial resolution useful for comparison. Previous studies found relationships between a precipitationevent in afternoon hours and the conditions of soil moisture preceding it. RCA4 reproduces most of the characteristics of the DCP overSouth America, especially the timing of the maximum, compared to satelliteproducts. The main differences between RCA4 and the satellite productsare located around Southeastern South America. The satellite products exhibit non negligible differencesbetween them. RCA4 data shows mostly an afternoon precipitation preferencefor heterogeneous SM conditions over a patch dryer than its surroundings.Western Amazonia and Southeastern SA have a preference for dryer than normaldays while Eastern Brazil has a preference for wetter days.