Universality of rain event size distributions

TL;DR

This study shows that rain event sizes follow similar power-law distributions across different climates, indicating a universal scale-free behavior likely linked to mesoscale meteorological processes.

Contribution

It demonstrates the universality of rain event size distributions across diverse climates and relates this to the absence of characteristic scales in mesoscale meteorology.

Findings

Rain event sizes follow power-law distributions with similar exponents across regions.

Differences are mainly in the large-scale cutoffs of the distributions.

Scale-free behavior is connected to mesoscale meteorological processes.

Abstract

We compare rain event size distributions derived from measurements in climatically different regions, which we find to be well approximated by power laws of similar exponents over broad ranges. Differences can be seen in the large-scale cutoffs of the distributions. Event duration distributions suggest that the scale-free aspects are related to the absence of characteristic scales in the meteorological mesoscale.