Unraveling the Dynamics of Moisture Transport During Atmospheric Rivers Producing Rainfall in the Southern Andes

Abstract

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are known to produce both beneficial and extreme rainfall, leading to natural hazards in Chile. Motivated to understand moisture transport during AR events, this study performs a moisture budget analysis along 50 zonally elongated ARs reaching the western coast of South America. We identify the convergence of moist air masses of tropical/subtropical origin along the AR as the primary source of vertically integrated water vapor (IWV). Over the open ocean, moisture convergence is nearly balanced by precipitation. The advection of moisture along the AR, although smaller compared to mass convergence, significantly increases toward the landfalling region. The near conservation of IWV over the open ocean, observed by tracking a Lagrangian atmospheric column along the ARs, is the explanation behind the seemingly tropical origin of ARs in time‐lapse visualizations of IWV.