Are tropical cyclones feeding more extreme rainfall events?
William K. M. Lau, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD; and Y. Zhou and J. H. -. T. Wu We have conducted a study of the relationships between tropical cyclone (hurricane in the North Atlantic (NAT) and typhoon in the western North Pacific (WNP)) intensity and extreme rainfall events using TRMM and GPCP rainfall data, and Tropical Cyclone (TC) track data. Extreme rain events are defined in terms of percentile rain rate, and TC rain by the amount of rain associated with a named TC, within a radius of 500 km centered at the storm location during the northern hemisphere TC season, July through November (JASON). Analyses using TRMM data (1998-2005) show that climatologically, 8% of rain events and 17% of the total rain amount over the NAT were accounted by TCs, compared to 9% of rain events and 21% of rain amount in WNP. This means that while TCs occur with similar frequencies in both basin, in terms of latent heat energy (rainfall) the WNP TCs pack more punch than the NAT counterparts. The TC-rain co
