TIME SCALES AND VARIABILITY OF AREA-AVERAGED TROPICAL OCEANIC RAINFALL Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • A statistical analysis of time series of area-averaged rainfall over the oceans has been conducted around the diurnal time scale. The results of our analysis can be applied directly to the problem of establishing the magnitude of expected errors to be incurred in the estimation of monthly area-averaged rain rates from low orbiting satellites. The study shows that rainfall measurements by a sun-synchroneous satellite visiting a spot twice per day will include a bias due to the existence of the semidiurnal cycle in the SPCZ ranging from 5 to 10 percentage points. The bias in the ITCZ may be of the order of 5 percentage points. -from Authors

published proceedings

  • MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW

author list (cited authors)

  • SHIN, K. S., NORTH, G. R., AHN, Y. S., & ARKIN, P. A.

citation count

  • 31

complete list of authors

  • SHIN, KS||NORTH, GR||AHN, YS||ARKIN, PA

publication date

  • July 1990