Precipitation deficits remain a concern to the rural population in the southern Peruvian highlands and knowledge about their occurrence is lacking because of scarce data availability. For mountainous regions with sparse station networks, reanalyses can provide valuable information; however, known limitations in reproducing precipitation are aggravated due to unresolved topographical effects. In this study, we assess in a first step the representation of precipitation during the rainy season (January–February–March) in seven reanalysis data sets in comparison to a newly generated gridded precipitation data set for Peru. In a second step, we assess summer precipitation deficits in Peru during the second half of the 20th century. In the reanalyses data sets, we find biases strongly influenced by the topography of the models and low correlations for the rainy season. Thus, reanalyses do ...

Seasonal predictions have a great socioeconomic potential if they are reliable and skillful. In this study, we assess the prediction performance of SEAS5, version 5 of the seasonal prediction system of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), over South America against homogenized station data. For temperature, we find the highest prediction performances in the tropics during austral summer, where the probability that the predictions correctly discriminate different observed outcomes is 70%. In regions lying to the east of the Andes, the predictions of maximum and minimum temperature still exhibit considerable performance, while farther to the south in Chile and Argentina the temperature prediction performance is low. Generally, the prediction performance of minimum temperature is slightly lower than for maximum temperature. The prediction performance of precipitat...

CLIMANDES is a pilot twinning project between the National Weather Services of Peru and Switzerland (SENAMHI and MeteoSwiss), developed within the Global Framework for Climate Services of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Split in two modules, CLIMANDES aims at improving education in meteorology and climatology in support of the WMO Regional Training Center in Peru, and introducing user-tailored climate services in two pilot regions in the Peruvian Andes. Four areas were prioritized in the first phase of CLIMANDES lasting from 2012 to 2015 to introduce climate services in Peru. A demand study identified the user needs of climate services and showed that climate information must be reliable, of high-quality, and precise. The information should be accessible and timely, understandable and applicable for the users’ specific needs. Second, the quality of climate data was enhance...

Filiación institucional de autor: Alejo Cochachín Rapre /Autoridad Nacional del Agua - Unidad de Glaciología y Recursos Hídricos (ANA-UGRH), Huaraz, Peru