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The Global Distribution of Precipitation and CloudsThe water cycle is the key circuit moving water through the Earth's system. This large system, powered by energy from the sun, is a continuous exchange of moisture between the oceans, the atmosphere, and the land. Precipitation (including rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, and hail), is the primary mechanism for transporting water from the atmosphere back to the Earth's surface and is the key physical process that links aspects of climate, weather, and the global water cycle. Global precipitation and associate cloud processes are critical for understanding the water cycle balance on a global scale and interactions with the Earth's climate system. However, unlike measurement of less dynamic and more homogenous meteorological fields such as pressure or even temperature, accurate assessment of global precipitation is particularly challenging due to its highly stochastic and rapidly changing nature. It is not uncommon to observe a broad spectrum of precipitation rates and distributions over very localized time scales. Furthermore, precipitating systems generally exhibit nonhomogeneous spatial distributions of rain rates over local to global domains.
Document ID
20040171853
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Shepherd, J. Marshall (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Adler, Robert (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Huffman, George (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Rossow, William (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Ritter, Michael (Wisconsin Univ. Stevens Point, WI, United States)
Curtis, Scott (East Carolina Univ. Greenville, NC, United States)
Date Acquired
September 7, 2013
Publication Date
August 20, 2004
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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