How Often Does It Really Rain?
Abstract
The perception about whether a place is a nice place to live often depends on how often it rains (or snows). The frequency relates to how dreary the weather appears, and it is the duration much more than the amount that clouds perceptions. Yet, information about the frequency of rainfall, or precipitation in general, is spotty at best. In this paper, we analyze a new near-global (60°N–60°S) dataset at hourly time scales and 0.25° resolution. The dataset, the newly calibrated Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH), enables comparison of results with 3-hourly and daily data, which is what has previously been available, and seasonal aspects are also examined. The results are quite sensitive to both the spatial scales of the data and their temporal resolutions, and it is important to get down to hourly values to gain a proper appreciation of the true frequency. At 1° resolution, values are 35% higher than for 0.25°. At 3-hourly resolution, they are about 25% higher than hourly, and at daily resolution, they are about 150% higher than hourly on average. Overall, near-global (60°N–60°S) precipitation occurs 11.0% ± 1.1% (1 sigma) of the time or, alternatively, 89.0% of the time it is not precipitating.more »
- Authors:
-
- National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1541808
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0012711
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 99; Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 0003-0007
- Publisher:
- American Meteorological Society
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Citation Formats
Trenberth, Kevin E., and Zhang, Yongxin. How Often Does It Really Rain?. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1175/bams-d-17-0107.1.
Trenberth, Kevin E., & Zhang, Yongxin. How Often Does It Really Rain?. United States. https://doi.org/10.1175/bams-d-17-0107.1
Trenberth, Kevin E., and Zhang, Yongxin. Fri .
"How Often Does It Really Rain?". United States. https://doi.org/10.1175/bams-d-17-0107.1. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1541808.
@article{osti_1541808,
title = {How Often Does It Really Rain?},
author = {Trenberth, Kevin E. and Zhang, Yongxin},
abstractNote = {The perception about whether a place is a nice place to live often depends on how often it rains (or snows). The frequency relates to how dreary the weather appears, and it is the duration much more than the amount that clouds perceptions. Yet, information about the frequency of rainfall, or precipitation in general, is spotty at best. In this paper, we analyze a new near-global (60°N–60°S) dataset at hourly time scales and 0.25° resolution. The dataset, the newly calibrated Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH), enables comparison of results with 3-hourly and daily data, which is what has previously been available, and seasonal aspects are also examined. The results are quite sensitive to both the spatial scales of the data and their temporal resolutions, and it is important to get down to hourly values to gain a proper appreciation of the true frequency. At 1° resolution, values are 35% higher than for 0.25°. At 3-hourly resolution, they are about 25% higher than hourly, and at daily resolution, they are about 150% higher than hourly on average. Overall, near-global (60°N–60°S) precipitation occurs 11.0% ± 1.1% (1 sigma) of the time or, alternatively, 89.0% of the time it is not precipitating. But outside of the intertropical and South Pacific convergence zones, where values exceed 30%, and the arid and desert regions, where values are below 4%, the rates are more like 10% or so, and over land where most people live, values are closer to about 8%.},
doi = {10.1175/bams-d-17-0107.1},
journal = {Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society},
number = 2,
volume = 99,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {3}
}
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