[1] Over the Tibetan Plateau, solar heating often produces strong convective instability in the atmosphere. Using 3 years (1998 -2000) of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar data, our investigations revealed a tower mast shape of precipitation over the Plateau in both height-longitude and height-latitude cross-sections. High rain rate center over the Plateau is located above 6km as a tower penetrating into the midtroposphere against the nearby background, implying a unique latent heating source injecting directly to the middle atmosphere. Results indicate that there are more isolated rain cells over the Plateau than its nearby regions, and the strongest diurnal cycle of rainfall existing over the Plateau with a peak around 1600 and a valley around 0500 local time, indicating the dominance of convective clouds caused by solar heating. It is also found that the TRMM algorithm might have misclassified weak convections as stratiform rains. Citation:
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.