A POINT PROCESS MODEL FOR TROPICAL RAINFALL

Two recently developed point process models for te-Poral rainfall are tested using 7 years of hourlY rain gauge data obtained from Majuro an d Truk atolls in the northern equatorial Pacific. The models were fit to data from two seasons, winter (January - March) and summer (June - August). The results indicate that neither model can adequately reprod uce the observed statistics for both seasons. A new model is proposed which characterizes the random nature of small convective events and t he event like occurrences of large tropical convective cloud clusters. The model is shown to be superior to the previous models in reproduci ng the first- and second-order moments of tropical rainfall as well as occurrence statistics such as the probability of rainfall and the exp ected rainfall conditional on rain.