Seasonal changes of the diurnal variation of precipitation in the upper Río Chagres basin, Panamá

Abstract

This study elucidated the characteristics of climatological seasonal changes in the diurnal variations of precipitation at four ground stations in the upper Río Chagres basin in the Panama Canal watershed. The seasonal changes differed among the stations, although they are located within an area of only 414 km2. Precipitation peaks in the early afternoon at 1500 local standard time (LST) were observed at all the stations. At Chamon, monthly-mean hourly precipitation at every hour exceeded 0.3 mm h–1 throughout November and December. The occurrence of morning precipitation in January and March distinguished the seasonal precipitation pattern at Esperanza from the pattern at the other stations. Analyses of the seasonal changes in the diurnal variation with pattern correlations and rotational empirical orthogonal functions grouped the stations into two pairs: no morning peak at Chico and Río Piedras in the downstream basin and morning peak at Chamon and Esperanza in the upstream basin.

Panama’s Current Climate Replicability in a Non-Hydrostatic Regional Climate Model Nested in an Atmospheric General Circulation Model

“…Eight ground-based precipitation stations observed by the Panama Canal Authority were also used (Figure 1b). The eight stations are located in and around the upper Chagres River Basin, a part of the Panama Canal Basin [27], which is a very important area for water resources of canal operations; the coordinates of the observation stations range from 79.40 • E to 79.51 • E and from 9.19 • N to 9.45 • N, corresponding to about a single grid box of MRI-AGCM. The elevation ranges from 110 to 2100 m.…”

“…This is also due to the insufficient horizontal resolution of GSMaP. The spatial variability of precipitation is distinct in a mountainous area of the Panama Canal catchment [27]. Therefore, the horizontal resolution of a precipitation dataset may affect the reportability of precipitation, especially for finer horizontal resolution of models such as NHRCMs.…”

Potential of representing the diurnal cycle of local-scale precipitation in northeastern Thailand using 5-km and 2-km grid regional climate models

“…In subtropical regions, hydrological cycles are characterized by diurnal cycles in precipitation (e.g. Wallace, 1975;Murakami, 1983;Nitta and Sekine, 1994;Nakaegawa et al, 2019), streamflow (Lundquist and Cayan, 2002), and sap flow (Kume et al, 2006). The diurnal cycles in precipitation are largely due to the specific orographic effects or the land-sea contrast (Yang and Slingo, 2001;Ohsawa et al, 2001).…”

A climate analogue approach to understanding the future climates of six South American capital cities

“…Identifying spatial and temporal analogues allows us to identify biota and harvest species that are most susceptible to climate change Leibing et al, 2013). This method also provides insight into how present climate conditions in target regions compare to future or past conditions in other areas (e.g., Williams et al, 2007;Ramírez-Villegas et al, 2011) and it has been applied in Central America (Pinzon et al, 2017), Russia (Nakaegawa et al 2019), Japan (Ishizaki et al, 2012), Australia , and at a global scale (Arnbjerg-Nielsen et al, 2015;Soteriades et al, 2017). Cabré et al (2014) Western South America comprises a broad range of climate conditions, including tropical, dry, temperate, and cold climate regimes.…”

“…Cabré et al (2014) Western South America comprises a broad range of climate conditions, including tropical, dry, temperate, and cold climate regimes. Locally, forcing (e.g., orographic precipitation; Nakaegawa et al, 2019) occurs off the west coast of southern South America and influences the southern Andes. The Andes may affect a future climate changes in Western America, although future precipitation at the end of this century is project to increase in wet season and to decrease in dry season over most of South America (Kitoh et al 2011).…”