Jun 21, 2017
Hourly storm characteristics along the U.S. West Coast: Role of atmospheric rivers in extreme precipitation
by
,
Geophysical Research Letters
- Analyzes gridded hourly precipitation observations over the conterminous U.S. from 1948 to 2002 to determine climatological characteristics of storm precipitation totals
- Finds that:
- Despite generally lower hourly intensities, precipitation totals along the U.S. West Coast (USWC) are comparable to those in southeast U.S.
- Storm durations, more so than hourly intensities, strongly modulate precipitation‐total variability over the USWC
- Atmospheric rivers (ARs) contribute 30–50% of annual precipitation on the USWC
- 60–100% of the most extreme storms, i.e., storms with precipitation‐total return intervals longer than 2 years, are associated with ARs
- These extreme storm totals are more strongly tied to storm durations than to storm hourly or average intensities, emphasizing the importance of AR persistence to extreme storms on the USWC