Observations on the distribution of precipitation over northern India using joint CloudSat, CALIPSO and TRMM measurements

ABSTRACT

Clouds and precipitation are closely associated with each other, and a baseline understanding of such meteorological parameters on various scales including their regional climatology is essentially needed. The present article deals with the annual and seasonal distribution of different forms of precipitation (liquid, solid and drizzle) and their association with the different cloud types over the northern states of India (NSI). Synergic estimates of precipitation obtained with raDAR-liDAR (DARDAR) and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission over a decade (2007–2016) are used to elucidate the same. The study on different forms of precipitation over NSI region exhibits opposite circulation of its solid (increase) and liquid (decrease) forms in westward or north-westward. The association of deep convective (DC) and nimbostratus (Ns) cloud types with solid precipitation on an annual scale is observed as 1.6% and 76% of their total co-occurrences, respectively. On the other hand, their association with liquid precipitation is found to be 98.4% and 23.7%, respectively, thereby implying that nimbostratus and DC clouds are the main contributors of solid and liquid precipitations, respectively, over the NSI region during the last decade.

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to ARIES and IIT(ISM) for providing necessary support and facilities to carry out this research work. ICARE Thematic Centre and NASA are also greatly acknowledged for providing access to the DARDAR and TRMM data used in this paper.