On the importance of moisture conveyor belts  from the tropical eastern Pacific for wetter conditions  in the Atacama Desert during the mid-Pliocene

Reyers, Mark; Fiedler, Stephanie; Ludwig, Patrick; Böhm, Christoph; Wennrich, Volker; Shao, Yaping

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-517-2023

Articles | Volume 19, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-517-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-517-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 2

Research article

|

27 Feb 2023

Research article |

| 27 Feb 2023

On the importance of moisture conveyor belts from the tropical eastern Pacific for wetter conditions in the Atacama Desert during the mid-Pliocene

Mark Reyers, Stephanie Fiedler, Patrick Ludwig, Christoph Böhm, Volker Wennrich, and Yaping Shao

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-517-2023-supplement

Data sets

WRF Output daily accumulated total precipitation 10 km resolution Atacama M. Reyers https://doi.org/10.5880/CRC1211DB.20

Rainfall data from WRF simulations for the Atacama Desert for present and mid-Pliocene climate (1.0) [Data set] S. Fiedler and M. Reyers https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7607397

Short summary

In this study we performed high-resolution climate model simulations for the hyper-arid Atacama Desert for the mid-Pliocene (3.2 Ma). The aim is to uncover the atmospheric processes that are involved in the enhancement of strong rainfall events during this period. We find that strong upper-level moisture fluxes (so-called moisture conveyor belts) originating in the tropical eastern Pacific are the main driver for increased rainfall in the mid-Pliocene.