Pilot Analysis of Hourly Rainfall in Central and Eastern Amazonia

Abstract

This paper presents results of a pilot study of rainfall along the part of the Amazon River that flows through Brazil. Rain was measured at three stations, one for each of three regimes: coastal, interior bottomland, and interior upland. For each station the record from 1 January 1988 through 31 December 1990 was parsed into accumulation periods of 1 h. Storms on the coast tended to be more showery than those in the interior and storms in the interior upland tended to be more showery than those in the interior lowland. The diurnal cycle varied with distance from the Amazon River as well as with distance from the Atlantic coast.