The purpose of this work was to study the space variability of the convective rainfall in Amazonia during the LBA/TRMM experiment 1999. A dataset of 37 rain gauges (split in 4 networks and geographically located with a maximum distance amongst them around 50 km) has been used to provide rainfall measurements for the period from mid Dec 1998 until end of Feb 1999, which is the peak of the rainy season at Rondonia (southwest of Amazonia). The methodology of interstation correlation (based on conditional probability and assuming a bivariate mixed lognormal distribution) have been applied to computed daily rainfall and the results had shown that rainfalls occurring within a 1 km of radius have a high correlation coefficient (ranging from 0.7 up to 0.9) representing the validation of a point rainfall measurement. The adjusted curve of the correlation coefficient (rho) vs distance (d in km) was: rho = 0.72 - 0.15 ln (d).
Interstation methodology; Correlation coefficient; Convective rainfall; Raingauges; Mesoscale convective system
