Abstract
In remote areas with steep topography, such as the Tropical Andes, reliable precipitation data with a high temporal resolution are scarce. Therefore, studies focusing on the diurnal properties of precipitation are hampered. In this paper, we investigated two years of data from Micro-Rain Radars (MRR) in Cuenca, Ecuador, and Huaraz, Peru, from February 2017 to January 2019. This data allowed for a detailed study on the temporal precipitation characteristics, such as event occurrences and durations at these two locations. Our results showed that the majority of precipitation events had durations of less than 3 h. In Huaraz, precipitation has a distinct annual and diurnal cycle where precipitation in the rainy season occurred predominantly in the afternoon. These annual and diurnal cycles were less pronounced at the site in Cuenca, especially due to increased nocturnal precipitation events compared to Huaraz. Furthermore, we used a fuzzy logic classification of fall velocities and rainfall intensities to distinguish different precipitation types. This classification showed that nightly precipitation at both locations was predominantly stratiform, whereas (thermally induced) convection occurred almost exclusively during the daytime hours.
Highlights
Precipitation is a major component in the hydrological cycle and characterized by a high temporal and spatial variability
A remaining challenge is the quantification of rainfall amounts from the Micro-Rain Radars (MRR), which is often associated with high uncertainties
A comparison of rainfall totals between the MRR and a collocated tipping bucket rain gauge (TBR) gauge in Cuenca showed that the MRR has a tendency to underestimate precipitation totals at that site, even for low precipitation sums
Summary
Precipitation is a major component in the hydrological cycle and characterized by a high temporal and spatial variability. This is especially true in areas with a pronounced topography, such as the Tropical Andes in South America. In this region, which is exposed to climate change, water is of high socio-economic importance [1,2]. The limited number of available in situ observations does not account for the complex topography and the resulting high spatio-temporal precipitation variability in the Tropical Andes. Uncertainties due to the data quality are frequent, especially from manned in situ stations [9]
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