Regional moisture sources

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Moisture Sources for Continental Climatic Regions (CCRs)

This is a catalog of moisture sources for two sets of continental climatic regions (CCRs) based on the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART using data from 1980 to 2012 obtained from the ERA-Interim reanalysis of the ECMWF:

• One based on 35 regions with similarities not only in terms of mean climate (1970-1999) but also in terms of projected changes in precipitation (2070-2099) [HOMOGENOUS FUTURE CHANGE] defined by Malstein and Knutti (2010)
• Other widely used in IPCC reports which represents 21 different climatic regimes [HOMOGENOUS CURRENT CLIMATE] defined by Giorgi and Francisco (2000)

The catalog contains the characteristics of all the major sources of moisture for each CCRs, and the analysis of their interannual variability and the role of the main climate variability modes, including the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) / Southern Annular Mode (SAM).

The estimation of the influence of those oceanic regions that will see the greatest increases in evaporation rate in future years is also analyzed.

Nieto, R., R. Castillo, A. Drumond, and L. Gimeno (2014), A catalog of moisture sources for continental climatic regions, Water Resour.  Res., 50, 5322-5328, doi:10.1002/2013WR013901.