| Abstrak/Abstract |
Heavy rainfalls are often associated with flood hazards as one of the most devastating events
across the globe. It is therefore important to identify the evolution of heavy rainfall cloud stuctures,
especially from global satellite observation, as a tool to provide better disaster early warning
systems. To identify the mechanism of heavy rainfall in relation to cloud, especially over
Indonesia, we aims to study the westward evolution of convective system over tropical pacific
ocean in relation with the heaviest surface precipitation. Global cloud and precipitation data
products in Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), CloudSat GEOPROF product, and
ECMWF-reanalysis (ERA) interim were utilized to characterize the evolution. Geolocation and
orbital timelag analysis of the three different datasets for more than 15 years (1998-2014) could
provide information related to the evolution of heavy rainfall cloud structures. Important finding of
this research shows that although the cloud structure being massive and tall from east pacific to
west pacific, heaviest rainfall occur at more confined cells rather than large scale-organized cloud
structures. In this case, larger number of cloud particles aloft is not always important in
determining near surface rain due to growth of convective cells of the confined system. |
