Convective and stratiform components of the precipitation‐moisture relationship

Abstract We reexamine the well known empirical relationship between area‐averaged surface precipitation ( P ) and the column moisture content ( r ) using ground radar and satellite observations, with an emphasis on the convective and stratiform rainfall classifications. The rapid rise in P above critical r ( r c ) or the “pickup” is more pronounced for stratiform rainfall on hourly and less time scales while convective rainfall, displays only a weak pickup above r c . After partitioning the area‐averaged rainfall into conditional rain rates and rain area, we find that the nonlinearity in the P‐r curve can be almost entirely explained by the nonlinear increase in rain area, especially in stratiform regions. These findings have implications for the representation of organized convective cloud systems in global circulation models.