TOTAL COLUMN WATER VAPOR FLUX AND - climate

TOTAL COLUMN WATER VAPOR FLUX AND PRECIPITATION AT SIERRA
DE GUADARRAMA
L. Durán a,b*, B. Rodríguez-Fonsecac, C. Yagüec & E. Sánchezd
a
Centro de Investigación, Seguimiento y Evaluación Sierra de Guadarrama, Madrid, Spain
b
c
d
interMET Sistemas y Redes S.L.U., Madrid, Spain
Dpto. Geofísica y Meteorología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Facultad de Ciencias Medioambientales, Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, Toledo, Spain
Sierra de Guadarrama is a part of the Iberian Peninsula Central System (Spain), a
mountain range located in the center of an extensive plateau, dominated by a continental
Mediterranean climate but under a strong Atlantic influence. This range provides of
enough water to several millions of inhabitants, crop fields, industries and the city of
Madrid, the capital of Spain. It seems very interesting to analyse the role played of the
synoptic scale circulations when reaching this mountain range resulting on orographic
precipitation. To tackle this problem, this work calculates water vapour flux patterns
using total column water vapour flux as a predictor field and a clustering analysis on the
first three principal components of the predictor field in order to define seven
differentiated total column flux patterns responsible of wet and dry days. Total column
water vapor flux was selected as predictor since it combines humidity and wind
velocity. Both factors are needed for having orographic precipitation. This
simplification was found to be very helpful for connecting this patterns with other wellknown broader teleconnection patterns. Finally, an analysis in terms of their
contribution to total precipitation, mean rain intensity and probability of precipitation
was made. This work is expected to help in the knowledge of precipitation climatology
and phenomenology over this still not very well-known area.
KEY WORDS: mountain climate, weather types, total column water vapor flux,
clustering
* Corresponding author.