TY - JOUR
T1 - Increased Likelihood of Appreciable Afternoon Rainfall Over Wetter or Drier Soils Dependent Upon Atmospheric Dynamic Influence
AU - Welty, Josh
AU - Stillman, Susan
AU - Zeng, Xubin
AU - Santanello, Joseph
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the NASA SMAP (NNX16AN37G) program. GPM-IMERG V06 data were obtained from Goddard's Earth Science Data and Information Services Center (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/), SMAP L4 data from the National Snow & Ice Data Center (https://nsidc.org/data/SPL4SMGP/versions/4), MERRA-2 data from NASA's GES DISC Simple Subset Wizard (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/SSW/), and MODIS/Terra+Aqua Land Cover Type data from NASA Earthdata Search (https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/). The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments, which substantially improved the manuscript.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the NASA SMAP (NNX16AN37G) program. GPM‐IMERG V06 data were obtained from Goddard's Earth Science Data and Information Services Center ( https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ), SMAP L4 data from the National Snow & Ice Data Center ( https://nsidc.org/data/SPL4SMGP/versions/4 ), MERRA‐2 data from NASA's GES DISC Simple Subset Wizard ( https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/SSW/ ), and MODIS/Terra+Aqua Land Cover Type data from NASA Earthdata Search ( https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/ ). The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments, which substantially improved the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
©2020. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2020/6/16
Y1 - 2020/6/16
N2 - The relationship between morning soil moisture and afternoon rainfall persists as an important yet unresolved challenge in land-atmosphere interaction study, complicated in part by atmospheric influence. Here, we address this relationship by utilizing NASA's satellite soil moisture and precipitation data for the warm season (June–September) of 2015–2019 over Northern Hemisphere land (0–60°N). Raining days are partitioned into low, medium, and high regimes of atmospheric water vapor convergence. Under the low convergence regime, afternoon rainfall is more likely to occur over wetter soils or higher relative humidity; for days with high moisture convergence, occurrence favors drier soils or lower relative humidity. For each regime, afternoon rainfall occurrence favors warmer morning soil or air temperature. These conclusions are not affected by the threshold magnitude utilized to identify afternoon rainfall events by accumulation, but the threshold value does affect the soil moisture (or relative humidity)-precipitation relationship when convergence regimes are not considered.
AB - The relationship between morning soil moisture and afternoon rainfall persists as an important yet unresolved challenge in land-atmosphere interaction study, complicated in part by atmospheric influence. Here, we address this relationship by utilizing NASA's satellite soil moisture and precipitation data for the warm season (June–September) of 2015–2019 over Northern Hemisphere land (0–60°N). Raining days are partitioned into low, medium, and high regimes of atmospheric water vapor convergence. Under the low convergence regime, afternoon rainfall is more likely to occur over wetter soils or higher relative humidity; for days with high moisture convergence, occurrence favors drier soils or lower relative humidity. For each regime, afternoon rainfall occurrence favors warmer morning soil or air temperature. These conclusions are not affected by the threshold magnitude utilized to identify afternoon rainfall events by accumulation, but the threshold value does affect the soil moisture (or relative humidity)-precipitation relationship when convergence regimes are not considered.
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U2 - 10.1029/2020GL087779
DO - 10.1029/2020GL087779
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85086458421
SN - 0094-8276
VL - 47
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
IS - 11
M1 - e2020GL087779
ER -