Seasonal variation of the diurnal cycle of rainfall in the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean

Summary The diurnal cycle of rainfall over the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean was studied for the period 23^rd October 2001 to 31^st October 2003 using hourly data from the Triton buoy positioned at 1.5° S and 90° E. An analysis of the active and weak spells of rainfall for different seasons revealed peaks in the late evening hours in Winter, Summer and Fall and in early morning hours (in Spring) in 2002. The active spell of rainfall peaked in the afternoon hours, during Winter, Spring and Summer in 2003, which agrees with the previous results of Janowiak et al. (1994). An analysis of rainfall events showed that Fall 2002 had a maximum number of rainfall events (90) and minimum (60) were observed in Spring 2003. Further it was found that the majority of rain events (>60%) were less than 3 hours in duration throughout the study period. The longer duration rainfall events (i.e. rain events greater than 6 hour duration) contributed significantly to Spring 2002 (20% of the total rainfall) and Winter 2003 (21% of the total rainfall). Harmonic analysis of the hourly rainfall data for different seasons revealed that diurnal harmonic explains more than 80% of the variance for all seasons. Furthermore, the diurnal harmonic has a maximum amplitude for all seasons except summer, where the semidiurnal and six hourly harmonics are significant.