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This study utilizes the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite precipitation radar (PR), lightning imaging sensor (LIS), and passive microwave imager (TMI) data together with ground-based lightning data to investigate the vertical structure, lightning, and rainfall characteristics of Amazonian and subtropical South American convection for three separate wet seasons. These characteristics are partitioned as a function of 850mb zonal wind direction, motivated by observations collected during the 6-week TRMM-Large-scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) field campaign. The TRMM-LBA field campaign observations suggest that systematic variations in Amazonian convective vertical structure, lightning, and rainfall are all linked to bimodal variations in the low-level zonal wind (e.g., easterly and westerly regimes). The more spatially and temporally comprehensive TRMM dataset used in this study extends the TRMM-LBA observations by examining regime variability in Amazonian and South American convective structure over a continental-scale domain.
Petersen et al. (Sat,) studied this question.