27
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Why One Side of Mountain Range is Lush
The Cascade Mountain Range in the US Pacific Northwest is a good example to use to explain this. The predominant wind direction is from the West - over the Pacific Ocean. The air over the ocean picks ...
- 4,429
15
votes
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Why does it rain more at night than during the day?
First off, your observation that Tamil Nadu gets more rainfall in the evening is partially backed by records. Sahany, Venugopal, and Nanjundiah, 2010 provide data on diurnal scale rainfall ...
- 3,366
13
votes
Transfer precipitation forecast in mm to expected snowfall in cm
@Peter Jansson provides a much more thorough answer, but for a quick conversion of expected liquid water equivalent to expected snow depth:
1 inch liquid water = 10 inches snow for warm storms
1 ...
- 231
9
votes
Why is Egypt so dry?
If you take a look at the atmospheric circulation pattern, the Hadley Cells in particular, they tell the story. The northern edge of Africa is on the descending edge of a Hadley Cell, which means
...
- 1,186
9
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Why One Side of Mountain Range is Lush
I'll augment the other answer with an example. Consider a theoretical north-south oriented mountain range that rises 2000 m above sea level and the land on either side of the range is at sea level. A ...
- 14.1k
8
votes
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Confusion with precipitation values in CORDEX MPI-ESM rcp data
TLDR;
The precipitation values (and possibly some other variables; see below) need to be divided by 24.
Background
The global attributes of the netCDF file in the question provide an URL to a ...
- 2,661
7
votes
Is there a risk with putting out smouldering underground coal reserves?
There isn't a risk to putting it out other than the attempt failing, it is just impractical to do so once a large coal vein catches fire. You can read more about the Centralia, PA coal fire on ...
- 14.1k
7
votes
Is there any place on Earth that is permanently a desert?
UserLTK, above, has mentioned the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the Atacama desert as two notable examples of "permanent" deserts. It's likely that these two locations have been deserts for at lease ...
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6
votes
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Why doesn't it snow even when it is below freezing?
Farrenthorpe is right, a little surfing the net for snow distribution would clarify the picture for you. However, I think you are referring to certain times when it rains further north and snows ...
- 14.2k
6
votes
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ERA Interim, how to handle total precipitation
First of all, these netCDF files follow the CF Metadata Conventions, which describe the use of scale_factor and add_offset in ...
- 3,940
6
votes
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How much rain falls on the Earth each year?
That's a tricky question, it will vary from year to year but we can narrow it down with some assumptions so I can give an answer. The assumptions will be:
All precipitation over the sea will become ...
- 17.6k
6
votes
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At what latitudes does the precipitation water for Europe evaporate?
A challenge is going to be "which moisture is from where". Because the atmosphere doesn't ever completely empty of moisture, for any given precipitation, which water molecules were from ...
- 8,713
5
votes
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Where can I get historic hourly precipitation data for Italy?
The US NCDC has this link to surface hourly global data which I was indeed able to find Napoli on.
It appears, based upon this page describing the World Data Center For Meteorology, that there may be ...
- 8,713
5
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How to reconcile hourly vs. daily probability of precipitation in the forecast?
The hours are not independent of each other. For example, suppose there's a chance of a hurricane hitting the area. If it hits, it will be rainy every hour of the day. If it misses, it will not rain ...
- 151
5
votes
How does temperature impact the elevation distribution of orographic precipitation?
Examining two extreme cases, one very cold and the other very warm, the amount of precipitable water in the very cold one will be far less than that in the very warm one. Even fully saturated, the ...
- 348
5
votes
Can I interpolate rainfall data from stations outside of watershed for the watershed?
Yes, you can interpolate the rainfall from stations outside the watershed. However, the quality of the interpolation will depend on the distance between the stations and the watershed, the prevailing ...
- 4,429
5
votes
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Drought in Scotland?
No there isn't a drought in Scotland, but there doesn't have to be for there to be a high fire risk.
As you say, the west coast is often wet which means the conditions are ideal for the (slow) build ...
- 685
4
votes
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Can climate models reliably predict meteorological extremes?
Here's one idea to account for meteorological extremes in our climate models, though I'm not sure if it answers your question and am less certain if it qualifies as reliable (open for feedback on that ...
- 1,178
4
votes
How does elevation affect the amount of rainfall received?
Elevation affects temperature which affects the amount of rain. Most raingauges around the world are within a few hundred metres of sea-level, i.e the range in which most people live. Within this ...
- 14.2k
4
votes
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Digitalizing precipitation data from the image of weather map
You can convert the image to NetCDF data using gdal_translate. The command line looks something like:
...
4
votes
What is the difference between Precipitable Water (PW or PWAT) and Quantitive Precipitation Forecast (QPF) in terms of computer weather model data?
Precipitable water is the total amount of moisture throughout the air (the total in the entire tropospheric air "column"; most moisture is found in the lowest few km, due to decreases in temperature ...
- 8,713
4
votes
Dissolved minerals
There are several processes that can cause a mineral to precipitate from solution. You mention one which is adding elements to the solution This could occur in a number of ways. For example, aragonite ...
- 4,429
4
votes
Accepted
monthly temperatue by state
It may take a few minutes of work this way...
But did find digging through NCDC's climate data inventory, the climatological rankings pages should help find what you're looking for if you're looking ...
- 8,713
4
votes
Can I interpolate rainfall data from stations outside of watershed for the watershed?
In short: Yes you can/should use stations outside of your watershed.
More in detail: There is well known methods in hydrology to solve the situation you are presenting.
One simple method is to ...
- 2,633
4
votes
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Easiest way to visualize precipitation drainage using raster elevation files in R?
It sounds like you're looking for flow accumulation (upstream) area, most likely. That's imperfect for what you're looking for (e.g. doesn't account for varying infiltration rates), but it's probably ...
- 383
3
votes
How does elevation affect the amount of rainfall received?
Elevation affects precipitation significantly, especially in a mountain environment. On the windward side of a mountain, precipitation is increased. As air parcel rises due to increasing elevation on ...
- 31
3
votes
A simple formulation to calculate the sequence and rate of salt precipitation in a brine?
Here is a link to a hydrochemical consultant, Dr. C.A.J. Appelo, and the public-domain software FREEQC.
It can be downloaded from here
This link leads to an example of salt precipitation rates when ...
- 246
3
votes
Is there a risk with putting out smouldering underground coal reserves?
Nice idea but the practicalities are impossible. There are parts of Indonesia which have out-of-control peat and coal fires which have been raging for years, and even decades, despite those areas ...
- 14.2k
3
votes
Why doesn't it snow even when it is below freezing?
Gordon has an excellent answer to one version of your Q. In case you are asking a more basic Q, here is a try at an answer.
Vini, think about the monsoons. Cooling the soggy parcel of air causes rain,...
- 1,207
3
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Is there a data source for annual global precipitation?
In case you want to learn something about precipitation first:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GPM/main/index.html
There is the most important information about current missions with some videos, ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible