Identification

Title

Contribution of extreme convective storms to rainfall in South America

Abstract

The contribution of extreme convective storms to rainfall in South America is investigated using 15 years of high-resolution data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR). Precipitation from three specific types of storms with extreme horizontal and vertical dimensions have been calculated and compared to the climatological rain. The tropical and subtropical regions of South America differ markedly in the influence of storms with extreme dimensions. The tropical regions, especially the Amazon basin, have aspects similar to oceanic convection. Convection in the subtropical regions, centered on La Plata basin, exhibits patterns consistent with storm life cycles initiating in the foothills of the Andes and growing into larger mesoscale convective systems that propagate to the east. In La Plata basin, convective storms with a large horizontal dimension contribute ~44% of the rain and the accumulated influence of all three types of storms with extreme characteristics produce ~95% of the total precipitation in the austral summer.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d75t3mz3

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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East bounding longitude

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South bounding latitude

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date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2016YYYY American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-11T20:52:16.733779

Metadata language

eng; USA