Heavier Inner-core Rainfall of Major Hurricanes in the North Atlantic Basin than Other Global Basins

Abstract

AbstractBased on 19 years of precipitation data collected by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, a comparison of the rainfall produced by tropical cyclones (TCs) in different global basins is presented. A total of 1789 TCs were examined in the period from 1998 to 2016 by taking advantage of more than 47,737 observations of TRMM/GPM 3B42 multi-satellite derived rainfall amounts. The axisymmetric component of the TC rainfall is analyzed in all TC-prone basins. The resulting radial profiles show that major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin exhibit significantly heavier inner-core rainfall rates than those in any other basins. To explain the possible causes of this difference, rainfall distributions for major hurricanes are stratified according to different TC intensity and environmental variables. Based on the examination of these parameters, we found that the stronger rainfall rates in the Atlantic major hurricanes are associated with higher values of convective available potential energy, drier relative humidity in the low to middle troposphere, colder air temperature at 250hPa, and stronger vertical wind shear than other basins. These results have important implications in the refining of our understanding of the mechanisms of TC rainfall.