Climatología de tormentas de granizo a partir de datos de radar meteorológico

H. PESSANO; HIERRO, R.; LLAMEDO, P.; DE LA TORRE, A.; ALEXANDER, P.

Mendoza

Conferencia; XI Congreso Argentino de Meteorología; 2012

Weathers radar give quantitative precipitation estimates of hailfall with high spatial resolutions. Accordingly, the analysis of a radar-based precipitation of haifall climatology is the primary interest. The Mendoza region is covered by a three conventional weather radar network consisting in two SBand (λ =10.4 cm) situated at (34.6S, 68.0W) and (33.0S, 68.4W) and one C-Band (λ =2.99 cm), situated at (34.3S, 69.3W). The radar network data is integrated using the TITAN (Thunderstorm Identification Tracking Analysis and Nowcasting), (Dixon and Viener, 1993) radar software which provides composite images selecting the maximum values in overlapping areas. The TITAN application identifies storm cells in volumetric radar data CAPPI with a 1 km3 spatial resolution, tracking their evolution. A ?cell storm" was defined as a three-dimensional region for which the radar reflectivity and volume exceed defined thresholds. Operational thresholds are set to 35 dBZ for reflectivity and 50 km^3 for the volume. In this paper 80 convective storms were analysed in the Mendoza region during the October-March seasons from 2005 to 2011. Of the subset of storm that hit cultivated areas, we correlated cells with probability of hail with de damage records by the DACC (Dirección de Agricultura y Contingencias Climáticas of Province of Mendoza). The damage inside the oasis is verified, georeferenced and compared with the TITAN tracking with the data of DACC. Additionally, a 200 hailpads network, regularly spaced each 5 km inside the oasis, is used to verify the hail track described by TITAN. The considered 80 convective storms precipitated hail in the three cultivated Oasis of Mendoza. We studied differentially storms occurred in the northern and southern Mendoza Province correlating, as well as storms were classified according to the time, position and weather conditions present