A Complexity View of Rainfall
- 19 December 2001
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 88 (1) , 018701
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.88.018701
Abstract
We show that rain events are analogous to a variety of nonequilibrium relaxation processes in Nature such as earthquakes and avalanches. Analysis of high-resolution rain data reveals that power laws describe the number of rain events versus size and number of droughts versus duration. In addition, the accumulated water column displays scale-less fluctuations. These statistical properties are the fingerprints of a self-organized critical process and may serve as a benchmark for models of precipitation and atmospheric processes.Keywords
All Related Versions
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- On the Performance of a Low-Cost K-Band Doppler Radar for Quantitative Rain MeasurementsJournal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 1999
- How Nature WorksPublished by Springer Nature ,1996
- Avalanche dynamics in a pile of riceNature, 1996
- Fractals, Raindrops and Resolution Dependence of Rain MeasurementsJournal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 1990
- FractalsPublished by Springer Nature ,1988
- Self-organized criticality: An explanation of the 1/fnoisePhysical Review Letters, 1987
- Fractal properties of rain, and a fractal modelTellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography, 1985
- Doppler radar characteristics of precipitation at vertical incidenceReviews of Geophysics, 1973
- A Suggested Statistical Model of some Time Series which occur in NatureNature, 1957
- Beiträge zur Optik trüber Medien, speziell kolloidaler MetallösungenAnnalen der Physik, 1908