Some annual variation characteristics for the Northern Hemispheric monthly mean precipitation fields

Abstract

By the utilization of monthly precipitation data from all stations in the Northern Hemisphere annexed to the “World Survey of climatology, Vol. 1–15”, the distributions of the maximum precipitation months (MPM), the annual relative precipitation (ARP) and the monthly relative precipitation (percent of annual) in January and July are respectively mapped. Moreover the distributions of intermonthly relative precipitation variabilities from January to December are plotted as well. From these figures, the precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere may be classified into three types(continental, oceanic and transitional types) and 17 regions. The precipitation regime may also be divided into two patterns, the global and regional patterns. The global pattern consists of planetary front system and ITCZ and its inter-monthly variation shows the north-and-south shift of the rain belt; the regional pattern consists of the sea-land monsoon and plateau monsoon regime, in which the inter-monthly variation of rain belt shows a east-and-west shift.