Abstract
The preparedness of national and local authorities for extreme hydrometeorological events could alleviate the impacts in many socioeconomical sectors. A statistical tool for the prediction or assessment of extreme precipitation probabilities caused by the presence of Tropical Cyclones (TCs) in the surrounding oceans of Central America is presented. The model is based in fitting precipitation probability distributions associated with the location of the TCs. The probabilities of medium, high, and very high levels of extreme rain and associated with the observed precipitation of the 60, 75, and 90 percentiles, are displayed in a map which can be used (with other tools) to issue alerts by emergency and response authorities. Impacts related to TCs can be classified in direct or indirect. In the case when the TCs are located in the Caribbean/Atlantic basin, there is a critical configuration near the Gulf of Honduras that drives both high probabilities of direct (in the northern countries) and indirect (in the southern countries) extreme precipitation. In the Eastern Tropical Pacific TC locations, probabilities of indirect impacts are usually lower than for the Caribbean/Atlantic. This is related to the usual trajectories in this former basin, that move away from the continent. Both, in Caribbean/Atlantic and Eastern Tropical Pacific’s TCs, the probabilities of indirect effects usually are higher in the Pacific slope of the isthmus than in the Caribbean. Here we present one tool that can be used with others analyses by emergency officials to determine the locations where alerts of extreme weather must be issued to prevent human life’s lost.
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Data availability
Precipitation data are available at https://data.chc.ucsb.edu/products/CHIRPS-2.0/global_daily/netcdf/p05/, wind data are available at https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47 with previous request, municipalities shapefiles https://gadm.org/download_country.html, TCs data https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/Data_Storm.html.
Code availability
Contact Kenneth Valverde at kenneth.valverdehernandez@ucr.ac.cr for the python script and manual.
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Acknowledgments
To the UCR School of Physics for giving us the research time to develop this study and the course FS-0624 in which the logic of the research was developed. To the UCR research center CIGEFI for its logistic support during the data compilation and analysis. Thanks to Paula M. Pérez Briceño and Andrés Cornejo for his help with the municipalities shapefiles, centroids, and average rain.
Funding
The authors wish to acknowledge the funding of this research through the following Vicerrectoría de Investigación, Universidad de Costa Rica grants: V.I. B0810 (Supported by German Federal Foreign Office, under the Action Plan of the Federal Foreign Office for humanitarian adaptation to climate change, through German Red Cross and Costa Rica Red Cross.), C0074, B9454 (supported by Fondo de Grupos), EC-497 (VarClim, supported by FEES-CONARE) and C0-610 (supported by Fondo de Estímulo).
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Conceptualization was contributed by HH and EA; methodology was contributed by HH, EA, and KV; coding and illustrations were contributed by KV; article draft was contributed by KV; corrections and formal analysis of the manuscript were contributed by HH and EA; observations and review of the manuscript were contributed by JB. All authors commented on this version of the manuscript, read and approved the final manuscript.
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Hidalgo, H.G., Alfaro, E.J., Valverde, K.T. et al. Probability of induced extreme precipitation events in Central America due to tropical cyclone positions in the surrounding oceans. Nat Hazards 116, 2917–2933 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05790-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05790-1