Constraining and Characterizing the Size of Atmospheric Rivers: A Perspective Independent From the Detection Algorithm

Atmospheric rivers (AR) are large and narrow filaments of poleward horizontal water vapor transport. Because of its direct relationship with horizontal vapor transport, extreme precipitation, and overall AR impacts over land, the AR size is an important characteristic that needs to be better understood. Current AR detection and tracking algorithms have resulted in large uncertainty in estimating AR sizes, with areas varying over several orders of magnitude among different detection methods. We develop and implement five independent size estimation methods to characterize the size of ARs that make landfall over the west coast of North America in the 1980–2017 period and reduce the range of size estimation from ARTMIP. ARs that originate in the Northwest Pacific (WP) (100°−180°E) have larger sizes and are more zonally oriented than those from the Northeast Pacific (EP) (180°−240°E). ARs become smaller through their life cycle, mainly due to reductions in their width. They also become more meridionally oriented toward the end of their life cycle. Overall, the size estimation methods proposed in this study provide a range of AR areas (between 7 × 10¹¹ and 10¹³ m²), that is, several orders of magnitude narrower than current methods estimation. This methodology can provide statistical constraints in size and geometry for the AR detection and tracking algorithms, and an objective insight for future studies about AR size changes under different climate scenarios.