Abstract
Spatiotemporal conditions that rule hydro-climatology over northern South America and the Caribbean Sea are influenced by a large amount of phenomena taking place at different timescales. Characterizing the activity of the AEWs over northern South America and the Caribbean is an imperative work to do in order to improve our understanding of the tropical atmospheric dynamics involved in hydrology and climate features over the region. The latter regulates the availability of very important resources such as water. Furthermore, AEWs activity plays an important role on air quality characteristics as a consequence of its connections with dust transport. In order to approach an adequate characterization of the AEWs activity over the region, this work addresses the relationship between these atmospheric perturbations and the occurrence or inhibition of precipitation, as well as possible connections with dust transport, when the AEW’s oscillations take place over northern South America and the Caribbean region. In particular, relative vorticity and outgoing long-wave radiation are used to identify AEW’s activity during the 1983–2013 period, together with daily precipitation anomalies, surface divergence, vertical integrated moisture flux, and Aerosol Optical Depth, in order to understand how the passage of AEWs could influence meteorological interactions in the region.
Highlights
Due to its geographical location, the spatiotemporal conditions that shape the hydro-climatology over northern South America and the Caribbean Sea are influenced by a large amount of phenomena taking place at different timescales
Precipitation anomalies were considered in order to filter interannual variability, which is the first mode of variability for precipitation over northern South America [1,24]
The correlation pattern exhibits the westward propagation of the African Easterly Waves (AEWs) and the occurrence of precipitation due to the enhanced convection activity related to these disturbances
Summary
Due to its geographical location, the spatiotemporal conditions that shape the hydro-climatology over northern South America and the Caribbean Sea are influenced by a large amount of phenomena taking place at different timescales Such location determines that the region receives a huge amount of solar radiation throughout the year. Mineral dust incursion into the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean is one of the major climatological features of the distribution of aerosols in this region [9] Such dust transport is considered as an important feature of the climate system [10], mainly because aerosols modulate radiation budget and hydrological cycle by direct and indirect processes, playing a potential role in regional weather and climate variability [11,12]. It is considered that between 10% and 20% of desert dust that is transported across the Atlantic Ocean during the boreal summer is related to AEW’s activity [9]
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