Universality of rain event size distributions

Ole Peters, Anna Deluca, A´lvaro Corral3, J. Davie Neelin, Christopher E. Holloway J. Stat. Mech., P11030, doi: 10.1088/1742-5468/2010/11/P11030.
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Abstract. We compare rain event size distributions derived from measurements in climatically different regions, which we find to be well approximated by power laws of similar exponents over broad ranges. Differences can be seen in the large-scale cutoffs of the distributions. Event duration distributions suggest that the scale-free aspects are related to the absence of characteristic scales in the meteorological mesoscale.

Citation. Peters, O., A. Deluca, A. Corral, J. D. Neelin and C. E. Holloway, 2010: Universality of rain event size distributions. J. Stat. Mech., P11030, doi: 10.1088/1742-5468/2010/11/P11030.


Acknowledgments. This work was supported in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Grant NA08OAR4310882 and the National Science Foundation Grant ATM-0645200. Data were obtained from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Environmental Sciences Division. A. D. would like to thank the Spanish Ministerio de EducaciŽon for travel support and Imperial College London for hospitality. Initial research by A.D. was supported by a grant from the Explora-Ingenio 2010 project FIS2007-29088-E. Other grants: FIS2009-09508, and 2009SGR-164. A.C. is a participant of the CONSOLIDER i-MATH project.