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Links between topography, moisture fluxes pathways and precipitation over South America

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Abstract

The Andes Cordillera plays a role in driving moisture and heat from tropical onto subtropical South America. It forces the development of a lee-side trough that covers most of western Argentina and a low-level jet that maximizes over Paraguay, eastern Bolivia and northern Argentina and is tightly linked to precipitation variability over much of central and southeastern South America. Its steep slopes and the large zonal gradients in topography between the Equator and 40°S are misrepresented in climate simulations using Global Climate Models (GCM) with resolutions coarser than about 100 km, since they naturally have a poor representation of the Andes and related circulation features. This paper analyses the impact of varying artificially the altitude of the Andes Cordillera in a GCM as well as increasing the horizontal resolution to study how these variations determine moisture fluxes and precipitation over selected regions of South America. Results show that the height of the Andes is crucial in shaping moisture fluxes pathways onto subtropical South America all year long. In particular, the low-level jet is only simulated when the Andes heights are doubled. At the same time, the relationship between the Andes shape and the location of the Bolivian High in summer is also discussed. In terms of precipitation, the lowest bias in the simulations is achieved when the horizontal resolution is increased, while in particular near the Andes foothills the simulated annual rainfall is largely determined by the Mountains shape.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Editor Dr. Edwin Schneider for their fruitful suggestions and contributions that helped improve an earlier version of this manuscript. This study was supported by the University of Buenos Aires UBACYT-20020100100803 and UBACYT-20020120300051, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas PIP2009-00444 and Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica PICT07-00400. T.A. was partially supported by FAPESP (08/58101-9) and CNPq/INCT Climate Change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos (DCAO; FCEN, UBA), Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA; UBA-CONICET), UMI-IFAECI/CNRS, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Ramiro Ignacio Saurral & Inés Angela Camilloni

  2. Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Tércio Ambrizzi

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  1. Ramiro Ignacio Saurral
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  2. Inés Angela Camilloni
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  3. Tércio Ambrizzi
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Correspondence to Ramiro Ignacio Saurral.

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Saurral, R.I., Camilloni, I.A. & Ambrizzi, T. Links between topography, moisture fluxes pathways and precipitation over South America. Clim Dyn 45, 777–789 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2309-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2309-z

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