|
|
THE ALTIPLANO RAINGAUGE NETWORK
Before SALLJEX the raingauge network that SENAMHI-Peru was operating in the
Altiplano and surroundings consisted on about 70 raingauges. The horizontal distribution of
the gauges is quite homogeneous but somewhat denser in the most populated areas.
The density of this network accounts for analyses that give an idea about the distribution of
the horizontal climatological
rainfall field. It is not dense enough, however, to adequately capture the mesoscale
variability of the convective rainfall that occurs in the Altiplano, in
particular, the rainfall associated with the convective storms that develop
over Lake Titicaca.
A raingauge network of about 150 raingauges was installed among the Altiplano
with the highest density of stations among the islands and shores of Lake Titicaca. From these
stations, 116 were succesfully collected after the end of the SALLJEX campaign.
Including the SENAMHI sites, the rainfall information available after the
SALLJEX consisted on daily rainfall data during a period of 6 months
(November 2002 - May 2003) for 166 sites. This information is available in
this site under
Raingauge Network - Dataset
, on the left frame.
After quality control procedures, the dataset selected for the rainfall
analyses and additional studies consisted on 98 raingauges (figure 1).
Most of them belonged to the SALLJEX enhanced network, however, 21 of them
belonged to SENAMHI since the quality control procedures suggested that
their quality was much better than the one of the SALLJEX gauges placed in the same
locations.
|
Figure 1. Raingauge Network Utilized for the analyses.
|
The following figure shows the entire SALLJEX Raingauge Network, which included
about 1000 raingauges distributed among Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru,
shown as red dots. The blue dots correspond to argentinean and
uruguayan network made available for SALLJEX. The yellow dots correspond to
the paraguayan network made available for SALLJEX and the green dots corresponds
to the SENAMHI-PERU (The National Weather Service) Raingauge network prior to
SALLJEX.
|
Figure 2. Entire SALLJEX Raingauge Network.
|
Figure 3 shows all the locations were rainfall data was collected in Peru. This network contains 166
raingauges, including the ones made available by SENAMHI. This information is also
available in
"Raingauge Network - Dataset"
, on the left frame, but only 98 of these sites were selected for the analyses (figure 1) since some
of the data were incomplete and/or showed very low correlations with the rest of the
sites and/or nearby locations.
|
Figure 3. SENAMHI (blue dots) & SALLJEX (red squares) Raingauge Networks in the Altiplano.
|
|
