Water is essential for life. In the Arabian Peninsula (AP), rainfall is irregular, infrequent and low. Climate studies show that the AP receives between less than SOmm per year and more than 2S0mm per year depending upon location. Therefore rainfall monitoring and modelling are very important in optimising the use of this scarce resource. Monitoring rainfall using satellite observations is an alternative method which can solve the problem of the inadequate rainfall monitoring by ground-based methods (raingauge and radar). In this project, rainfall variability over the study area was shown using raingauges observations. The Tropical Applications of Meteorology using SATellite (TAMSAT) approach has been tried to estimate rainfall in the Arabian Peninsula. It depends on the use of cold cloud duration based only on thermal infra- red imagery. Then, the rainfall estimates were utilized to evaluate the rainfall ERA- Interim reanalysis dataset over the study area, and the tele-connection between the rainfall variability over the southwest mountainous region of the AP and the southwesterly monsoon was derived using the ERA-Interim data. The results show that the AP has extreme temporal/spatial variation of rainfall. Most of the' study area receives rainfall between October and May while rainfall occurs in the southwest region (SWAP) throughout the year by getting two rainy seasons (winter and summer). It was found that the TAMSAT approach performs well over the SWAP during summer which led to conducting an evaluation of rainfall ERA-Interim date only over this region. The evaluation has shown that the rainfall reanalysis data captures the summer intra/inter-annual rainfall pattern while its rainfall values are overestimated specifically for September. The analysis of the connection between rainfall variability over the SWAP and the southwesterly monsoon gave indication of the monsoon influences. The main finding is the relationship between weak (break)/strong (active) monsoon and the increase/decrease of rainfall over the study area in terms of providing perceptible water which enhances the creation of rainy clouds.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:558779 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Assiri, Mazen Ebraheem |
| Publisher | University of Reading |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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