Climatological Characteristics of Overshooting Convective Precipitation in Summer and Winter over the Tropical and Subtropical Regions

The climatological characteristics of overshooting convective precipitation including frequency, conditional rain rate, and precipitation profiles are investigated based on the measurements of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR) during 1998-2007 over the tropical and subtropical areas. Results indicate that both deep and overshooting convections are mainly distributed over the intertropical convergence zone, the South Pacific convergence zone, the Asia monsoon region, Africa south of 20°N, and America. The distributions of deep and overshooting convections show remarkable regionality and seasonal variations. Meanwhile, deep convections over land penetrate into TTL (Tropical Tropopause Layer) more easily than those over ocean. And totally, the overshooting convection frequencies are under 0.2% over most of the tropical and subtropical areas. Conditional rain rates of the overshooting convections over most regions exceed 10mm/h, and those over ocean are higher than that over land. But the contribution of the overshooting convections to total rain is small due to the low frequency. The shapes of deep and overshooting convective precipitation profiles are similar, but rain rates of overshooting convections are larger than that of deep convections, and the differences also show remarkable regionality. Moreover, seasonal variations of deep and overshooting convective precipitation profiles over the tropical areas (15°S-15°N) are minimal.