scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Topic

Precipitation

About: Precipitation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 32861 publications have been published within this topic receiving 990496 citations. The topic is also known as: rain & rainfall.


Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
01 Apr 2006
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the connection between decreasing water discharges, global El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events and anthropogenic impacts in the drainage basin of the Huanghe River in China.
Abstract: The Huanghe, the second largest river in China, is now under great pressure as a water resource. Using datasets of river water discharge, water consumption and regional precipitation for the past 50 years, we elucidate some connections between decreasing water discharges, global El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events and anthropogenic impacts in the drainage basin. Global ENSO events, which directly affected the regional precipitation in the river basin, resulted in approximately 51% decrease in river water discharge to the sea. The degree of anthropogenic impacts on river water discharge is now as great as that of natural influences, accelerating the water losses in the hydrological cycle. The large dams and reservoirs regulated the water discharge and reduced the peak flows by storing the water in the flood season and releasing it in the dry season as needed for agricultural irrigation. Thus, as a result, large dams and reservoirs have shifted the seasonal distribution patterns of water discharge and water consumption and finally resulted in rapidly increasing water consumption. Meanwhile, the annual distribution pattern of water consumption also changed under the regulation of dams and reservoirs, indicating that the people living in the river basin consume the water more and more to suit actual agricultural schedule rather than depending upon natural pattern of annual precipitation. The combination of the increasing water consumption facilitated by the dams and reservoirs and the decreasing precipitation closely associated with the global ENSO events over the past half century has resulted in water scarcity in this world-famous river, as well as in a number of subsequent serious results for the river, delta and coastal ocean.

448 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the temporal variability of model soil moisture and precipitation have been studied in an effort to understand the interactions of these variables with other components of the climate system, and it has been shown that the spectra of monthly mean precipitation over land are close to white at all latitudes, with total variance decreasing poleward.
Abstract: An atmospheric general circulation model with prescribed sea surface temperature and cloudiness was integrated for 50 years in order to study atmosphere-land surface interactions. The temporal variability of model soil moisture and precipitation have been studied in an effort to understand the interactions of these variables with other components of the climate system. Temporal variability analysis has shown that the spectra of monthly mean precipitation over land are close to white at all latitudes, with total variance decreasing poleward. In contrasts, the spectra of soil moisture are red, and become more red with increasing latitude. As a measure of this redness, half of the total variance of a composite tropical soil moisture spectrum occurs at periods longer than nine months, while at high latitudes, half of the total variance of a composite soil moisture spectrum occurs at periods longer than 22 months. The spectra of soil moisture also exhibit marked longitudinal variations. These spectral...

448 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the potential impact of tropical free troposphere warming on remote tropical climates through investigating the adjustment of a single-column model to imposed tropospheric temperature variations, assuming that ENSO controls interannual tropical temperature variations at all tropical locations.
Abstract: The warming of the entire tropical free troposphere in response to El Nino is well established, and suggests a tropical mechanism for the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnection. The potential impact of this warming on remote tropical climates is examined through investigating the adjustment of a single-column model to imposed tropospheric temperature variations, assuming that ENSO controls interannual tropospheric temperature variations at all tropical locations. The column model predicts the impact of these variations in three typical tropical climate states (precipitation > evaporation; precipitation < evaporation; no convection) over a slab mixed layer ocean. Model precipitation and sea surface temperature (SST) respond significantly to the imposed tropospheric forcing in the first two climate states. Their amplitude and phase are sensitive to the imposed mixed layer depth, with the nature of the response depending on how fast the ocean adjusts to imposed tropospheric temperature f...

447 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated spatial variation in precipitation by correlation and regression analysis of long-period records and found that there is a strong positive correlation between winter precipitation at stations over the entire region, so that, for practical forecasting of summer runoff in some basins, a single valley-floor precipitation station can be used.
Abstract: . Most of the flow in the River Indus from its upper mountain basin is derived from melting snow and glaciers. Climatic variability and change of both precipitation and energy inputs will, therefore, affect rural livelihoods at both a local and a regional scale through effects on summer runoff in the River Indus. Spatial variation in precipitation has been investigated by correlation and regression analysis of long-period records. There is a strong positive correlation between winter precipitation at stations over the entire region, so that, for practical forecasting of summer runoff in some basins, a single valley-floor precipitation station can be used In contrast, spatial relationships in seasonal precipitation are weaker in summer and sometimes significantly negative between stations north and south of the Himalayan divide. Although analysis of long datasets of precipitation from 1895 shows no significant trend, from 1961–1999 there are statistically significant increases in winter, in summer and in the annual precipitation at several stations. Preliminary analysis has identified a significant positive correlation between the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and winter precipitation in the Karakoram and a negative correlation between NAO and summer rainfall at some stations. Keywords: upper Indus basin, climate change, time series analysis, spatial correlation, teleconnections

447 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
13 Oct 2005-Nature
TL;DR: It is concluded that changes in ocean circulation, and hence sea surface temperature patterns, were important in modulating atmospheric moisture transport onto the central African continent.
Abstract: Past hydrological changes in Africa have been linked to various climatic processes, depending on region and timescale. Long-term precipitation changes in the regions of northern and southern Africa influenced by the monsoons are thought to have been governed by precessional variations in summer insolation(1,2). Conversely, short-term precipitation changes in the northern African tropics have been linked to North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies, affecting the northward extension of the Intertropical Convergence Zone and its associated rainbelt(3,4). Our knowledge of large-scale hydrological changes in equatorial Africa and their forcing factors is, however, limited(5). Here we analyse the isotopic composition of terrigenous plant lipids, extracted from a marine sediment core close to the Congo River mouth, in order to reconstruct past central African rainfall variations and compare this record to sea surface temperature changes in the South Atlantic Ocean. We find that central African precipitation during the past 20,000 years was mainly controlled by the difference in sea surface temperatures between the tropics and subtropics of the South Atlantic Ocean, whereas we find no evidence that changes in the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone had a significant influence on the overall moisture availability in central Africa. We conclude that changes in ocean circulation, and hence sea surface temperature patterns, were important in modulating atmospheric moisture transport onto the central African continent.

446 citations


Network Information
Related Topics (5)
Climate model
22.2K papers, 1.1M citations
89% related
Climate change
99.2K papers, 3.5M citations
87% related
Global warming
36.6K papers, 1.6M citations
85% related
Vegetation
49.2K papers, 1.4M citations
85% related
Water content
49.8K papers, 1.1M citations
84% related
Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20237,839
202214,365
20212,302
20201,964
20191,942
20181,773