Investigation of Precipitation Variations over Wet and Dry Areas from Observation and Model

Figure 1

(a) Spatial pattern of the mean GPCP V2.2 precipitation () for 1988–2012 over the tropical and subtropical regions (40°S–40°N). (b) Low-pass filtered time series of precipitation averaged over high-precipitation areas ( mm/mon.). (c) Low-pass filtered time series of precipitation averaged over low-precipitation areas ( mm/mon.). El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signals have been removed from the time series by a regression method based on the Niño3.4 index. A low-pass filter is also applied to remove the high frequency signals. Solid white contours refer to the wet area where the precipitation is higher than 200 mm/mon. Dotted white contours refer to the dry area where the precipitation is lower than 50 mm/mon.

(a) GPCP Precipitation Climatology

(b) > 200 mm/mon.

(c) < 50 mm/mon.