Temporal downscaling and statistical analysis of rainfall across a topographic transect in northwest Mexico

For this purpose, the rainfall statistical properties over a wide range of temporal scales (3 months-1 min) for the summer (July-September) and winter (November-March) seasons are first analyzed. Rainfall accumulation is found not to be significantly correlated with elevation in either season, and a strong diurnal cycle is found to be present only in summer, peaking in the late afternoon.

Winter rainfall events are highly correlated between individual stations across the transect even at short aggregation times (<30 min), and summer storms are more localized in space and time. Spectral and scale invariance analyses showed the presence of three (two) scaling regimes in summer (winter), which are associated with typical meteorological phenomena of the corresponding time scales (frontal systems and relatively isolated convective systems).