10-year Climatology of Tropical Rainfall Characteristics from TRMM Data

Using TRMM 3A25 data from 1998 to the present, containing 10-year period of data, we examined the interannual variation of the characteristics of the rainfall in the tropics globally and locally.

The result shows that the TRMM 3A25 data and other TRMM data detect the interannual variation of rainfall over the equatorial central Pacific, in concert with the SST change, which is closely related with El Niño/La Niña cycle.

We examined the impact of the boost of the satellite from 350 km to 400 km altitude in August 2001, and found that the boost affect little to the interannual variation.