Tropical Continents Rainier Than Expected From Geometrical Constraints

Abstract

Abstract Abundant rainfall over tropical land masses sustains rich ecosystems, a crucial source of biodiversity and sink of carbon. Here, we use two characteristics of the observed tropical precipitation distribution, its distinctive zonal arrangement and its partitioning between land and ocean, to understand whether land conditions the climate to receive more than its fair share of precipitation as set by the land‐sea distribution. Our analysis demonstrates that it is not possible to explain the tropics‐wide partitioning of precipitation unless one assumes that rain is favored over land. Land receives more than its fair share of precipitation by broadening and letting the tropical rainbelts move more, effectively underpinning a negative feedback between surface water storage and precipitation. In contrast, rain is disfavored over land in climate models. Our findings suggest that the abundance of rainfall that shapes the terrestrial tropical biosphere is more robust to perturbations than models have suggested.

Keywords

• precipitation
• tropics
• land‐atmosphere interactions
• land‐to‐ocean precipitation ratio
• observation