Space-time study of the pluviometric regime in southem Mexico

Abstract

The Mexican Republic, with an area of 2,000,000 km², presents important temporaland spatial variations of rainfall; with values ranging frorn 200 mm in the north to 3,000 rnrn M the south. A Poisson probability distribution is used to describe the mean number of events (λ) and an exponential distribution is used to describe the mean event rainfall (β). The regionalization is carried out in a geostatistical framework and the use of Hovmoller diagrams is suggested to characterize the pluviometric regime in southern Mexico. It is confirmed that these diagrams represent a powerful tool of rainfall formulation patterns, while clearly and simply displaying the relationship between the mean nurnber of events and the mean event rainfall, as well as its temporaland spatial variation. The results appear lor hydrological region 30, an area bordering with Guatemala and Belize. The results suggest that the proposed probability distributions explain the space-time variation of precipitation.