The origin of precipitation during the rare case of Hurricane Catarina over the South Atlantic Ocean ...

• Main Authors: Pérez-Alarcón, Albenis, Coll-Hidalgo, Patricia, Fernandez-Alvarez, José Carlos, Trigo, Ricardo M., Nieto, Raquel, Gimeno, Luis
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences 2023
• Subjects: South Atlantic Ocean
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.57757/iugg23-0104; https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5016448

<!--!introduction!--> Tropical cyclones (TCs) are extremely rare over the South Atlantic Ocean (SATL) due to predominant unfavourable conditions. Nevertheless, unusual conditions over SATL associated with a blocking system promoted the formation of Hurricane Catarina from an extratropical precursor in late March 2004, which produced heavy rainfall in southeastern Brazil. This work identifies the moisture sources for the precipitation produced by Catarina along its 6-hourly trajectory throughout a Lagrangian moisture tracking method. We extracted the pathways of precipitating air parcels within the cyclone's outer radius from the global outputs of the FLEXPART model forced with the ERA-Interim reanalysis. Our findings revealed the terrestrial source in southeastern Brazil (SEB) and the oceanic source limited by the box between 20-40°S and 30-50°W over SATL (WSATL) as the principal moisture sources, with the overall support of ~27% and ~66%, respectively. However, their contribution varied according to ... : The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023) ...