Spatiotemporal Structure of Precipitation Related to Tropical Moisture Exports over the Eastern United States and Its Relation to Climate Teleconnections

Abstract

Abstract Tropical moisture exports (TMEs) may play an important role in extreme precipitation. An analysis of the spatiotemporal structure of precipitation associated with TMEs for the eastern United States at seasonal and daily time scales is presented. TME-based precipitation is characterized based on the change in specific humidity along TME tracks delineated in a Lagrangian analysis of the ERA-Interim dataset. The empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) of seasonal TME-based precipitation are analyzed separately for each season to identify the dominant modes of interannual variability. Loading patterns for the first EOF show a distinct seasonal cycle in the core region of TME-based precipitation across the eastern United States, while the second EOF describes a northwest–southeast oscillation in the center of TME-induced precipitation occurrence. The EOFs for TMEs are compared against EOFs of gauged flood count data, which exhibit similar spatial structures. Correlations between TME EOFs, geopotential heights, and sea surface temperatures suggest a strong connection between TME-based precipitation, the Pacific–North American (PNA) pattern, Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO), and the Intra-Americas Sea patterns for much of the calendar year. Daily TME-based and total precipitation is projected onto the leading seasonal EOFs to examine the characteristics of upper-quantile daily events. The daily analysis suggests that the PNA can potentially provide information regarding heavy TME-based precipitation at a lead time of 1–10 days or more in most seasons and total precipitation in the winter. The potential for subseasonal, seasonal, and decadal forecasts or conditional simulations of precipitation in the study region is discussed.