Latent Heating Profiles over the Amazon in relation to the Atlantic Walker Circulation

The western rising branch of the local Walker circulation over the Atlantic intensifies as a result of enhanced convection and the associated latent heat release over the greater Amazon region. Monthly measurements gathered from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission are used to construct a latent heating climatology, which is then compared to those generated by the Convective and Stratiform Heating (CSH) and Spectral Latent Heating (SLH) algorithms, to determine methodological accuracy. Three-dimensional reflectivity measurements collected during the Green Ocean Amazon experiment (GOAmazon2014/5) by the Sistema de Proteção da Amazônia (SIPAM) S-band Doppler radar located in Manaus in the central Amazon are also used to calculate latent heating profiles, and are compared to local sounding budgets. From there, it is then possible to highlight variations from the climatological norm, and to determine whether variations in magnitudes of observation-based latent heating are strongly correlated with variations in sea-level pressure and surface wind measurements over the Atlantic (associated with the return branch of the Walker circulation) derived from reanalysis datasets. Heating profile variations may have important implications for the timing of the dry to wet season transition over the Amazon and interannual variations in Atlantic Walker circulation due to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).