A Regional Scale Investigation of Climatological Tropical Convection and Precipitation in the Amazon Basin

Abstract

This study constructs a regional scale climatology of tropical convection and precipitation from more than 15 years of monthly outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and precipitation data on 2.5°× 2.5° latitude-longitude grid to examine the spatial and temporal patterns and variability of convection and precipitation in the Amazon Basin. A linear regression analysis also detects if any trends exist in the two datasets. The region of study extends from 15°N to 25°S and 30° to 80°W that encompass the Amazon Basin and surrounding fringe areas for the period from January 1979 through December 1995 for the OLR data and up to 1996 for the precipitation dataset. The basin-average mean monthly and seasonal climatology serve as a ‘baseline’ reference for comparison with the full time series of basin-average monthly OLR and precipitation to illustrate the interannual variability and identify anomalous periods of wet and dry conditions. A linear trend analysis of OLR data found small negative values across the Amazon Basin indicating a slight increase in convective activity over the period of study. The analysis of the precipitation time series, however, shows no coincidental increase in precipitation as would be expected with an increase in convective activity. Portions of Rondônia and Mato Grosso, areas that have undergone extensive deforestation, illustrate no trend in precipitation as suggested by GCM simulation results. The only area featuring any large change in precipitation occurs in a small area in the northwestern region of South America where a large positive trend in precipitation exists.