Rainfall and Dragon-Kings

Ole Peters, Kim Christensen, J. David Neelin The European Physical Journal, 205, 147-158, doi:10.1140/epjst/e2012-01567-5.

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© Copyright 2012 by EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag

Abstract Previous studies have found broad distributions, resembling power laws for different measures of the size of rainfall events. We investigate the large-event tail of these distributions and find in one measure that tropical cyclones account for a large proportion of the very largest events outside the scaling regime, i.e., beyond the cutoff of the power law. Tropical cyclones are sufficiently rare that they contribute a significant number only in a regime of large event sizes that common rain events almost never reach. The different physical dynamics of tropical cyclones permits a substantial extension of the tail in this large-event regime.

Citation Peters, O., K. Christensen and J. D. Neelin, 2012: Rainfall and Dragon-Kings. The European Physical Journal, 205, 147-158, doi:10.1140/epjst/e2012-01567-5.

Acknowledgments. We would like to thank L. Nuijens for processing micro rain radar data from the Barbados site and making them available to us in near-real time. Cluster data for Fig. 3 and Fig. 6 were generated by S. Nesbitt for Ref. [9]. A. Deluca and A. Corral helped compile and analyze data shown in Fig. 2 for Ref. [7]. O.P. acknowledges support from ZONlab ltd. D.N. acknowledges support from National Science Foundation AGS-1102838.