Fig. 1: Rainfall distribution and air-sea interactions in the tropical oceans.
From: Does rainfall create buoyant forcing at the ocean surface?
a Map showing the annual mean of the precipitation occurrence time (%; color) and the mooring locations used in this study. The red-filled circles, squares, stars, and diamonds represent the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO), Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (RAMA), Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic (PIRATA), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) moorings array. b Probability density functions (PDFs) of ocean-only fractions of the area under total (green), heavy (red), and light (blue) rain at any time. Upward triangles represent medians. The above estimations of annual mean of the precipitation occurrence time and ocean-only fractions of the area under rain at any time are based on twelve years (2008--2019) of the multi-satellite Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B42 3-hourly dataset and above a 0.2 mm/hr threshold over the equatorial ocean between 20°S to 20°N. Sample time series of hourly observations from the equatorial RAMA mooring at 0°N 80.5°E. c Rain rate (RR, green, mm/hr), e temperature at 1 m depth (SST, red, °C), and air temperature (AT, blue, °C), g wind speed (U10, gray, m/s), (i) incident shortwave (QSW, light blue, W/m2) and incoming longwave (\({Q}_{LW}^{IN}\), light red, W/m2), d latent heat flux (QLAT, blue, W/m2), f sensible heat flux (QSEN, blue, W/m2), h rain-induced sensible heat flux (\({Q}_{SEN}^{Rain}\), blue, W/m2), and (j) net heat flux (QN, W/m2). Light red and light blue shaded areas in (j) represent positive (heat gain) and negative (heat loss) heat flux. The horizontal line in (j) marks the mean net heat gain during a cloud-free day. k Salinity and (l) temperature at 1 m (blue) and 10 m (red) depths. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
