A Global Perspective of Tropical Cyclone Precipitation in Reanalyses

This study compares the spread in climatological tropical cyclone (TC) precipitation across eight different reanalysis datasets: NCEP-CFSR, ERA-20C, ERA-40, ERA5, ERA-Interim, JRA-55, MERRA-2, and NOAA-20C. TC precipitation is assigned using manual tracking via a fixed 500-km radius from each TC center. The reanalyses capture similar general spatial patterns of TC precipitation and TC precipitation fraction, defined as the fraction of annual precipitation assigned to TCs, and the spread in TC precipitation is larger than the spread in total precipitation across reanalyses. The spread in TC precipitation relative to the inter-reanalysis mean TC precipitation, or relative spread, is larger in the east Pacific than in the west Pacific. Partitioned by reanalysis intensity, the largest relative spread across reanalyses in TC precipitation is from high-intensity TCs. In comparison with satellite observations, reanalyses show lower climatological mean annual TC precipitation over most areas. A comparison of area-averaged precipitation rate in TCs composited over reanalysis intensity shows the spread across reanalyses is larger for higher intensity TCs. Testing the sensitivity of TC precipitation assignment to tracking method shows that climatological mean annual TC precipitation is systematically larger when assigned via manual tracking versus objective tracking. However, this tendency is minimized when TC precipitation is normalized by TC density. Overall, TC precipitation in reanalyses is affected by not only horizontal output resolution or any TC preprocessing, but also data assimilation and parameterization schemes. The results indicate that improvements in the representation of TCs and their precipitation in reanalyses are needed to improve overall precipitation.