Confidential manuscript submitted to Water Resources Research

1 Seasonality of Rainfall in Colombia

2 Viviana Urrea1 , Andrés Ochoa1 , and Oscar Mesa1

3
1 Departamento de Geociencias y Medio Ambiente, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín

4 Key Points:

5 • We identified four types of annual rainfall regimes: unimodal, bimodal, mixed and

6 aseasonal

7 • Unimodal regime predominates in the north, east, and south-east, bimodal in the An-
8 des, and aseasonal in the west, while the mixed occurs in transition zones.

9 • Intertropical Convergence Zone migration, the Chocó, and Caribbean low-level jets
10 and topography are the major controls of the rainfall seasonality

Corresponding author: Andrés Ochoa, aochoaj@unal.edu.co

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 Confidential manuscript submitted to Water Resources Research

11 Abstract

12 The knowledge of the annual cycle of rainfall is of primary concern for many socio-
13 economic activities such as agricultural planning, electricity generation, and flood and other

14 disaster management. The annual cycle of rainfall in Colombia has been studied so far using
15 monthly or quarterly information, identifying zones with the unimodal regime (one wet and
16 one dry season) over the Caribbean, the Amazon and the Pacific regions and zones with the
17 bimodal regime (two wet and two dry seasons) in the Andes. This paper explores the annual

18 rainfall cycle in Colombia on a daily basis using historical records of 1706 rain gauges and
19 the Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) precipitation
20 dataset. We found four types of annual precipitation regimes: unimodal, bimodal, mixed and

21 aseasonal. The unimodal regime predominates in the low-altitude zones of the east and the
22 north, the bimodal and mixed regimes over the Andes mountain range and the aseasonal in
23 the Pacific region. These results improve the statistical diagnosis of the spatial variability of
24 the rainfall seasonality in Colombia. This phenomenon, however, is still far from being fully

25 understood in its hydro-climatic context. The annual migration of the Inter-tropical Con-
26 vergence Zone is not enough to explain the diversity of rainfall regimes in Colombia. Local
27 factors such as topography and land cover could play an important role in the occurrence and
28 duration of rainfall seasons.

29 1 Introduction

30 The fluctuation between rainy and dry periods is the main expression of climate sea-
31 sonality in the tropics. For instance, 18th studies report the occurrence of two types of rain-
32 fall regimes in Colombia, those with one dry and one wet season, and those with two dry

33 and two wet seasons per year [e.g. Cochrane, 1825; Wright, 1839; Mosquera, 1866; Hettner,
34 1892]. However, there is not a clear physical mechanism to explain them. Several authors
35 have pointed out the meridional migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) as

36 the main driver of the annual cycle of Colombia’s hydroclimatology [Snow, 1976; Poveda
37 and Mesa, 1997; Poveda et al., 2006]. The general picture set by the ITCZ is affected by
38 other phenomena as the Chocølow-level jet [Hoyos et al., 2017; Poveda and Mesa, 2000,
39 1999], the Caribbean jet [Hoyos et al., 2017; Poveda et al., 2006; Poveda and Mesa, 1999],

40 the atmospheric rivers [Montoya et al., 2001; Poveda et al., 2014], the presence of the An-
41 des mountain range [Guhl, 1974; Pagney, 1978; Garreaud, 2009], the advection from the

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42 Amazon and Orinoco basins [Martínez et al., 2011; Poveda et al., 2006] and the El Niño-
43 Southern Oscillation (ENSO) [Poveda et al., 2006, 2001].

44 The diagnosis of rainfall seasonality in Colombia has been made for a century using

45 monthly or quarterly data, identifying unimodal regions (with one dry season and one rainy
46 season) and bimodal regions (two dry and two rainy seasons). In fact, it is common to de-
47 scribe the rainy seasons in Colombia using the DJF (December to February), MAM (March
48 to May), JJA (June to August) and SON (September to November) quarters [see for example

49 Martin, 1929; Trojer, 1958, 1959; Guhl, 1974; Snow, 1976; Mesa et al., 1997; Espinoza Vil-
50 lar et al., 2009]. This monthly based approach has two drawbacks: 1) it forces the duration
51 of the seasons to be integer multiples of one month, and 2) the changes of a season can only

52 occur at the end of a month.

53 In this paper, we overcome these two drawbacks by using daily rainfall time series.
54 We use two data sources (Section 2): a) the rain gauge network of the National Hydrologi-
55 cal Service of Colombia (IDEAM), and b) the Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation

56 with Station data (CHIRPS v2.0) [Funk et al., 2015] satellite product, with a spatial resolu-
57 tion of 0.05◦ . We use a two-step method. The first step is to estimate the number of seasons
58 at each site. This estimation is done using the fraction of the variance (FVE) explained by

59 the annual and semiannual components revealed by the Fourier analysis of the long-term an-
60 nual average cycle. This approach has been used to estimate the number of wet seasons over
61 Africa at the daily [Dunning et al., 2016] and monthly [Liebmann et al., 2012] time scales.
62 In this study, a visual inspection of the 1706 IDEAM time series allowed to calibrate an au-

63 tomated algorithm to estimate the number of seasons per year for the 37012 grid cells of the
64 CHIRPS dataset (see details in Section 3.1). The second step of the method is to calculate
65 the onset date and duration of each one of the seasons identified in the first step. The dates

66 of season change are defined and calculated as the slope-breaking points of the cumulative
67 rainfall mass curve, as in Cook and Buckley [2009], who used two-phase linear regressions to
68 determine the onset and withdrawal of the summer monsoon in Thailand. Slight variations of
69 this approach were used for studying the seasonality of South American rainfall [Liebmann

70 et al., 2007], the Indian Summer Monsoon [Misra et al., 2017a; Noska and Misra, 2016], the
71 wet seasons in Florida [Misra et al., 2017b], African precipitation [Liebmann et al., 2012]
72 and the South Asian Monsoon [Misra and DiNapoli, 2014]. This method and the time reso-

73 lution of our data sets allowed us to calculate the start day and length (in days) of the dry and

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74 rainy seasons at each site. These results constitute the most detailed characterization of the
75 annual regime of precipitation in Colombia to date.

76 2 Data

77 2.1 Rainfall Stations

78 We use 1706 series of daily rain from the IDEAM data-set. These series were selected
79 from an initial set of 2716 series, of which 120 were discarded due to low data quality and
80 890 because they were shorter than 20 years. After this filtering process, the records span
81 from 1970 to 2015 with some missing data in many time series. Figure 1 shows the five natu-

82 ral regions of Colombia defined by the Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi (IGAC) [IGAC,
83 1997] and the IDEAM rain gauge network. The IDEAM network covers a range of eleva-
84 tions from sea level in the Caribbean and Pacific coasts to 4150 meters above sea level in the

85 Andes. Note the low gauge network density in the southeastern part of the country compris-
86 ing the Amazon and Orinoco regions. These 1706 time series are available in the supplemen-
87 tary material of the digital version of this article.

¯
N

Caribbean
12°

CARIBBEAN SEA
10°

PANAMÁ VENEZUELA
8°

Andes
6°

Pacific
Orinoco
4°

PACIFIC OCEAN
2°

Amazon
ECUADOR
0°

4
Altitude [km]

3 BRAZIL
2
-2°

1
PERÚ
-4°

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

Relative number of
stations above level
-80° -78° -76° -74° -72° -70° -68°

88 Figure 1. The five natural regions of Colombia [IGAC, 1997] and the IDEAM rain gauge network. The

89 bottom left graph shows the vertical distribution of the rain stations.

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90 2.2 CHIRPS v2.0

91 Climate Hazards Group Infra-Red Precipitation with Station data is a rainfall dataset
92 created and managed by the US Geological Survey and University of California [Funk et al.,

93 2015] and available to the public since 2014. The CHIRPS dataset contains data from 1981
94 to near-present over continental areas between 50◦ S and 50◦ N at several time and space res-
95 olutions. In this paper, we use the 0.05◦ spatial resolution and the daily time resolution from
96 1/1/1981 to 12/31/2016. This 0.05◦ spatial resolution is approximately 5 km in the tropics,

97 resulting in 37012 CHIRPS grid cells over Colombia.

98 3 Methods

99 The daily long-term annual average cycle (LTAC) is the mean daily precipitation for
100 each day of the year (doy). It is a vector of 365 data values. We computed the LTAC for each
101 one of the 1706 rain gauges of IDEAM and the 37012 grid cells of CHIRPS. Then a two-
102 step process was carried out on LTAC: 1) identifying the number of seasons per year, i.e., the

103 regime type, and 2) estimating the onset date and duration of each season.

104 3.1 Regime Classification

105 The number of seasons of the LTAC defines the rainfall regime. We propose a regime
106 classification for Colombia with four regime types: unimodal, bimodal, mixed and aseasonal.
107 Figure 3 shows a few examples of these regime types. The mixed regime has two clear rainy

108 and dry seasons, but one (either wet or dry) is considerably more prominent than the other.

109 By performing a visual classification of the 1706 IDEAM stations to identify regime
110 types, we calibrate an automated procedure to identify regime types in the CHIRPS grid
111 cells. The procedure is based on the FVE by the annual and semiannual components of the

112 LTAC. The Supplementary Information contains an in-depth review of the FVE calculation.

113 The automatic classification procedure assigns a regime type according to the follow-
114 ing criteria:

115 • Unimodal regime: the FVE of the annual component is greater than the threshold,
116 and the FVE of the semiannual component is less than the threshold.

117 • Bimodal regime: the FVE of the annual component is lower than the threshold, and
118 the FVE of the semiannual component is greater than the threshold.

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119 • Mixed regime: if the FVE of both components is greater than the threshold.

120 • Aseasonal regime: the FVE of both components is less than the threshold.

121 Although the annual component FVE vs. semiannual component FVE domain is a
122 continuous space (Figure 2), the use of the FVE threshold results in the four classes de-
123 scribed above. The FVE threshold is a parameter to be calibrated. Even though there could
124 be a certain degree of subjectivity in this step, classifying into a small set of categories al-

125 lows us to inspect and understand regional patterns in a straightforward way. To choose an
126 optimal threshold, we tried different values and selected the one that maximizes the accu-
127 racy between the automatic and the visual classification. Accuracy is the sum of the main

128 diagonal of the confusion matrix [Stehman, 1997] between the visual and automatic proce-
129 dures and quantifies the number of hits. The left panel in Figure 2 shows the accuracy of
130 the automatic classification for FVE thresholds between 0 and 1. The maximum accuracy
131 is 84.5% and occurs for an FVE threshold of 0.2. We use this value for classifying the rain-

132 fall regime at the CHIRPS grid cells. Therefore, the domain of the FVE by the annual and
133 semiannual components for each regime type is divided into the four regions depicted in the
134 middle graph of Figure 2.

1.0
Total 1. Aseasonal
80 Caribbean
Unimodal 2. Unimodal
FVE by annual component

0.8
Bimodal 3. Mixed seasonality
Andes
60 Aseasonal 4. Bimodal
Accuracy [%]

0.6
2 Amazon
40
Orinoco
0.4
3
20 Pacific
0.2

1 4 Colombia
0 0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Threshold of FVE FVE by semi-annual component FVE

135 Figure 2. Left: Accuracy of the Fourier classification method as a function of the FVE threshold. The

136 visual classification was taken as a reference to determine the optimal threshold value. Center: Regions in the

137 dispersion diagram of FVE explained by the annual vs. semiannual components. Each one of the four regions

138 corresponds to a different seasonal regime of precipitation. Right: Box plot of FVE for the annual (gray) and

139 semiannual (black) components of the LTAC of the IDEAM data set for the five natural regions of Colombia

140 [IGAC, 1997].

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141 3.2 Season Identification

142 Once the rainfall regime type was determined, we proceed to estimate the Start date Of
143 the Season (SOS) and the Duration Of Season (DOS) for each site.

144 We designed an algorithm that estimates SOS and DOS by fitting a n-piecewise linear
145 interpolation of the LTAC, where n is the number of seasons. The algorithm fits all possible
146 combinations and selects the one that minimizes the error. The algorithm has two parame-

147 ters, the minimum DOS (we used 15 days) and the SOS time step (we used five days). An
148 animation showing the iterative process is available in the Supplementary Information. Ad-
149 ditionally to SOS and DOS, the algorithm calculates the average daily precipitation for each
150 season and the DOY of the first season change in the year.

151 4 Results

152 4.1 Regimes

153 The results of the automatic classification process have some sensitivity to the FVE

154 threshold value, especially at the boundaries between zones 2 and 3 (unimodal and mixed),
155 and between zones 3 and 4 (bimodal and mixed) in the middle panel of Figure 2. For differ-
156 ent values of the FVE threshold, the zone with mixed seasonality may increase or decrease
157 at the expense of zones 2 and 3 (see right panel of Figure 5). Besides the accuracy with the

158 visual classification, the 0.2 threshold value gives a coherent picture of the regions. In par-
159 ticular, mixed regimes are located in the transition from flat low-lands to places with more
160 complex topography.

161 Figure 3 shows some representative examples of the different rainfall regimes in Colom-
162 bia: 1) the stations Vásquez Cobo (in the south) and La Raya (in the east) exhibit a unimodal
163 regime, although their rainy seasons are quite different. 2) Observatorio Meteorológico Na-

164 cional (in downtown Bogotá) has a clear bimodal regime. 3) Because of minimal FVE values
165 for both the annual and semiannual components of the Bebedó station (in the Pacific region)
166 it has an aseasonal regime. 4) The Uniban station (in the north) has FVE values greater than
167 0.20 in both annual and semiannual components, being higher in the annual component, so it

168 is a mixed regime. In Uniban, the mid-year dry season is weak since only a small reduction
169 in rainfall occurs.

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¯
N
Uniban
Annual component Semiannual component
A = 3.09 mm A = 2.66 mm
12°
Φ = 220 days (Aug 8) Φ = 313 days (Nov 9)
20
FVE = 0.3029 FVE = 0.2241
Rainfall [mm/day]

15

10
10°

5
La Raya
Annual component Semiannual component
25 A = 4.99 mm
1
32
60
91
121
152
182
213
244
274
305
335
365
A = 1.37 mm
Φ = 195 days (Jul 14) Φ = 325 days (Nov 21)
FVE = 0.5127 FVE = 0.0386
20

Rainfall [mm/day]
8°

15

10

5
6°

1
32
60
91
121
152
182
213
244
274
305
335
365
Bebedó
50 Annual component Semiannual component
4°

A = 1.97 mm A = 0.73 mm
Φ = 242 days (Aug 30) Φ = 364 days (Dec 30)
FVE = 0.0701 FVE = 0.0096
40
Rainfall [mm/day]

30
Aeropuerto Vásquez Cobo
2°

Annual component Semiannual component

A = 3.26 mm A = 0.95 mm
20
20 Φ = 39 days (Feb 8) Φ = 290 days (Oct 17)
FVE = 0.4898 FVE = 0.0411
Rainfall [mm/day]

10
15
1
32
60
91
121
152
182
213
244
274
305
335
365
0°

10
Observatorio Meteorológico Nacional
Annual component Semiannual component
A = 0.40 mm A = 1.53 mm 5
Φ = 364 days (Dec 30) Φ = 303 days (Oct 30)
8 FVE = 0.0400 FVE = 0.5960
1
32
60
91
121
152
182
213
244
274
305
335
365
Rainfall [mm/day]
-2°

2
-4°

1
32
60
91
121
152
182
213
244
274
305
335
365

-80° -78° -76° -74° -72° -70° -68°

170 Figure 3. Examples of the rainfall regimes occurring in Colombia. Uniban gauge: mixed regime, La Raya

171 gauge, and Aeropuerto Vásquez Cobo gauge: unimodal regime, Observatorio Meteorológico Nacional gauge:

172 bimodal regime and Bebedó gauge: aseasonal regime. For each gauge, the inset shows LTAC (black irregular

173 line), annual and semiannual components (gray dashed lines), the resultant of both (smooth black line) and

174 with the gray shaded rectangles the results of the mass curve slope identification of each season average daily

175 rainfall. In the legend the phase (φ), amplitude (A), and the fraction of the variance explained (FV E) for both

176 the annual and semiannual component are also included.

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177 Figure 5 shows the spatial distribution of the rainfall regime for Colombia. Also, there
178 is a comparison of the visual classification with the classification based only on the Fourier
179 components for the IDEAM series and the Fourier classification for CHIRPS. Overall, the
180 unimodal regime prevails over bimodal and mixed. The unimodal regime occurs to the south

181 and center of the Caribbean region and north of the Andean region, in the Orinoco and Ama-
182 zon regions and to the north of the Pacific region. The bimodal and mixed regimes occur
183 mainly in the Andean region and the north of the Caribbean region, in La Guajira. In the Pa-

184 cific region, we observe the occurrence of the four rainfall regimes.

185 Lack of seasonality was observed in a few areas of the country with year-round rainy
186 climate. A first instance is the center of the Pacific region at 5◦ N near the city of Quibdó.

187 This area is near notable topographical barriers as the Serranía del Baudó and the western
188 mountain range; additionally, the low-level jets of Chocó and the Caribbean reach maxi-
189 mum advection values in these latitudes [Poveda and Mesa, 1999]. The second instance is
190 the south of the Pacific region between 2◦ N and 3◦ N over a large part of the Patía river basin.

191 A third instance is in Nariño over the area known as the Nudo de Los Pastos in the Andes
192 mountain range. The last and fourth instance is further south, in the Amazon at approxi-
193 mately 2◦ S and 73◦ W, between the Caquetá and Putumayo rivers.

194 We observe that bimodal and mixed regimes frequently occur over complex topogra-
195 phy areas. Two areas deserve a particular mention. The first is south of Cartagena, where a
196 small area with bimodal and mixed regimes is observed surrounded by unimodal regimes;
197 this region corresponds to Montes de María or Serranía de San Jacinto. The second is south

198 of the foothills of the Eastern Cordillera, in the Orinoco region, where there is a large intru-
199 sion of areas of mixed regimes in areas of unimodal regimes; this area is close to Serranía de
200 la Macarena. The mixed seasonality found in La Guajira needs further analysis. La Guajira

201 a semi-arid region with low annual rainfall for Colombian standards (4̃80 mm/year) and with
202 many zero-rainfall days. Therefore, sporadic storms have an important effect on the annual
203 mass curve. That is the case of the first rainy season detected at La Guajira, which occurs in
204 only some years. In section 6 we present more considerations about inter-annual variability.

205 Finally, the unimodal regime occurs in areas with lower elevations. However, there
206 are exceptions. One is a small patch of unimodal regime surrounded by bimodal regimes in
207 the north of the country. This zone corresponds to the valley of the Magdalena River near

208 Barrancabermeja. Also, another zone in the south and center of the Caribbean region and

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209 the north of the Andean region is unimodal. This zone corresponds to the lower Nechí val-
210 ley, part of the San Jorge river basin and the Sinú river basin, and also includes most of the
211 Mompox depression. The last exception is in the north of the Pacific region over the Serranía
212 del Baudó and the alluvial valleys of the Atrato and San Juan rivers.

213 Guzmán et al. [2014] is the only reference we found that makes a spatially continuous
214 classification of rainfall seasonality in Colombia. Their results are very similar to our results
215 with CHIRPS (Figure 4). However, there are two differences: 1) they classified the Pacific

216 region regime as “without a dry season” and we as aseasonal, and 2) the Caribbean islands
217 as “bimodal” and we found that they are unimodal. These differences are probably due to the
218 different methods and criteria used.

219 Figure 5 shows the dispersion diagrams of the FVE for Colombia and each one of its
220 natural regions. The color indicates the elevation above sea level of each site. The Supple-
221 mentary Information of this paper includes similar figures for latitude and longitude. The
222 Pacific region is very complex, with no predominance of any of the rain seasonality types.

223 It has classifications in all types of regime proposed in section 3.1. The Amazon, Orinoco
224 and Caribbean regions have a clear predominance of the unimodal regime. Finally, the An-
225 dean region, although it has a high density of points in zones 3 and 4 (mixed and bimodal

226 regimes), also has some points in region 2 (unimodal regime).

227 For all regions, we observe that many sites at low elevations exhibit a unimodal regime,
228 although within the Andean region there are bimodal regime sites at a low elevation, espe-

229 cially at the bottom of the valleys. In the Orinoco and Amazon regions, the FVE for the an-
230 nual component increases with latitude. On the other hand, the Caribbean region presents the
231 opposite pattern: the FVE for the annual component increases as the latitude decreases. Fi-
232 nally, the longitude reveals some patterns mainly in the Orinoco and Caribbean regions (see

233 Supporting Information). In the Orinoco, there is a tendency that as the longitude increases,
234 the FVE for the annual component increases, probably reflecting the proximity to the Andes.
235 In the Caribbean, the easternmost stations have a lower FVE for the annual component, prob-

236 ably due to the influence of the Caribbean low-level jet and the role of the topography of the
237 Sierra Nevada and the northern foothills of the Eastern Cordillera.

238 Figure 2 describes the distributions of the FVE for the annual component (in gray) and
239 the FVE for the semiannual component (in black) for each natural region and the whole of

240 Colombia using a box and whisker plot. The Andes is the only region where the semiannual

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¯ ¯ ¯
N N Unimodal N
Unimodal Unimodal
Bimodal Bimodal Bimodal

12°

12°

12°
Aseasonal Mixed seasonality Mixed seasonality
Aseasonal Aseasonal
10°

10°

10°
8°

8°

8°
6°

6°

6°
4°

4°

4°
2°

2°

2°
0°

0°

0°
-2°

-2°

-2°
-4°

-4°

-4°
-80° -78° -76° -74° -72° -70° -68° -80° -78° -76° -74° -72° -70° -68° -80° -78° -76° -74° -72° -70° -68°

244 Figure 4. Spatial distribution of the seasonal regimes of precipitation in Colombia. Left: Visual method of

245 classification for IDEAM rain gauges. Center: Same but the classification according to Fourier analysis using

246 a threshold of 0.2 in the FVE for each component. Right: Same but using CHIRPS precipitation dataset.

241 component dominates the annual cycle seasonality. Data for Colombia in Figure 2 are calcu-
242 lated by using all rainfall stations in our data set, which has 1062 out of 1706 sites located in
243 the Andes region.

250 4.2 Seasons

251 We computed the SOS, DOS, and the average daily rainfall for each IDEAM rain gauge
252 and CHIRPS grid cell by using the slope change algorithm of the mass curve of the LTAC.

253 The Supplementary Information of this paper contains a video showing the algorithm work-
254 ing and the maps showing the spatial distribution of SOS, DOS and season mean daily rain-
255 fall. In general, we found good correspondence between the results for the two datasets.

256 CHIRPS represents well the seasonality of the rain both in the SOS and in the DOS. Figure 3
257 shows, in light gray polygons, some examples of the representation made by the method, the
258 start, duration and average of the daily rain of the seasons.

259 4.2.1 Unimodal Regime

260 Start of Season: the wet season begins in the south of the Amazon in early Novem-
261 ber and moves northwesterly to the Caribbean region where it starts at the beginning of May.

262 The CHIRPS data set shows a discontinuity in the translation to the north of the starting date
263 of the rains near the center of the Amazon; where the wet season starts late (March to May)

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Colombia Pacific Orinoco

1.0 1.0 1.0

FVE by annual component

FVE by annual component

FVE by annual component
Altitude [masl] Altitude [masl] Altitude [masl]
3000 1000 800
0.8 0.8 0.8
2500 800 650
0.6 2000 0.6 0.6
600 500
1500
0.4 0.4 400 0.4 350
1000
200 200
0.2 500 0.2 0.2
0 0 50
0.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
FVE by semi−annual component FVE by semi−annual component FVE by semi−annual component

Amazon Andes Caribbean

1.0 1.0 1.0
FVE by annual component

FVE by annual component

FVE by annual component
Altitude [masl] Altitude [masl] Altitude [masl]
400 3000 300
0.8 0.8 0.8
2500 240
320
0.6 0.6 2000 0.6
180
240 1500
0.4 0.4 0.4 120
1000
160
60
0.2 0.2 500 0.2
80 0 0
0.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
FVE by semi−annual component FVE by semi−annual component FVE by semi−annual component

247 Figure 5. The fraction of variance explained (FVE) by the semiannual and annual components of the LTAC

248 for the rain gauges in each of the five natural regions of Colombia. Rain gauge elevation above sea level is

249 color-coded according to the graphical scale.

264 whereas in their adjacent zones starts between February and March. The dry season also
265 moves in the same direction. It starts in the south of the Amazon in late May and early June
266 and moves north toward the Caribbean region at the end of November and early December.
267 In this case, there are no discontinuities in comparison with adjacent zones. As a result, the

268 dry season is longer for the center of the Amazon than for the adjacent zones. This discon-
269 tinuity is only evident in CHIRPS, and because of the lack of stations it could be real or an
270 artifice introduced by the CHIRPS algorithms (see maps in the Supplementary Information).

271 Duration of season: in all regions with the unimodal regime, the wet season is longer
272 than the dry season. The wet season lasts between 152 and 274 days, whereas the dry season
273 lasts from 91 to 182 days. The center of the Amazon region is the only exception. There the
274 wet season lasts from 80 to 152 days and the dry season from 152 to 285 days (see maps in

275 the Supplementary Information).

276 Mean daily rainfall: for unimodal regime zones, the Caribbean region has the lowest
277 rainfall, and the Pacific region has the highest. During the dry season, there is a considerable

278 reduction in rainfall, mainly in the Caribbean and Orinoco regions, where rainfall does not
279 exceed 5 mm/day during the dry season. In other unimodal regions dry season rainfall does

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280 not exceed 10 mm/day, except for the Pacific region. Note that the term dry season is relative
281 and that for global standards these values are high. During the humid season, the Amazon
282 and Orinoco regions show similar rainfall between 8 and 13 mm/day, the Caribbean region
283 between 1 and 15 mm/day and the Pacific region between 10 and 28 mm/day (see maps in

284 the Supplementary Information).

285 Figure 6 shows the starting, center and ending dates of the rainy seasons produced by
286 the breakpoint detection algorithm of the mass curve of the LTAC as a function of latitude,

287 using the IDEAM information. As can be seen, the northward displacement of the centroid
288 of the only rainy season in the unimodal regime is slower than that of the first rainy season in
289 the bimodal regime and does not follow the trajectory of the ITCZ. Also, being a unimodal
290 regime, the second pass of the ITCZ towards the south in the second semester is not reflected

291 in precipitation. From this observation follows the need for a different explanation than the
292 passage of the ITCZ to understand this regime. We consider this point in Section 5.

293 Looking in more detail, the duration of the rainy season in the north of the country,

294 west of the Orinoco region and north of the Amazon region, is longer than the duration of
295 the dry season (of the order of 240 days), that is, the rain in those areas persists despite the
296 absence of the ITCZ. This persistence is an indication that the ITCZ migration is not the only

297 explanation of the annual rain regime in these regions.

298 Figure 7 complements the previous analysis showing the average daily rainfall as a
299 function of the latitude and the day of the year. For unimodal stations, the figure can be con-

300 sidered a continuation to the north of Figure 4 in Liebmann and Mechoso [2011, p. 141],
301 suggesting an explanation associated with the so-called South American monsoon, see Sec-
302 tion 5.

303 4.2.2 Bimodal and Mixed Regimes

304 Start of season: the first wet season begins at the south of the Andean region dur-
305 ing February, and it moves towards the north. The rains begin at the center of the region in

306 March and later to the north of the region, the foothills of the western mountain range and
307 part of the Caribbean region in April. The first dry season begins pretty uniformly through-
308 out the region during June. The second wet season begins at the north of the Andean region
309 and part of the Caribbean region in August and then moves towards the south during Septem-

310 ber and October. The second dry season begins at the north and center of the Andean region

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311 and part of the Caribbean region towards the end of November and the beginning of Decem-
312 ber and then moves further south. This second dry season starts to the south of the region
313 and in the foothills of the western mountain range in the middle and end of December. There
314 is a low dispersion of the starting day of the dry seasons especially for the second one (see

315 maps in the Supporting Information).

316 Duration of season: the first wet season and the first dry season are longer in the south
317 of the region than in the north, while the second wet season and the second dry season are

318 longer in the north than in the south. Season duration of the first wet season is on average
319 50 to 80 days in the northern Andean region and part of the Caribbean region. For the other
320 seasons, the duration is 30 to 60 days for the first dry season, 100 to 120 days for the second
321 humid season and 110 to 150 days for the second dry season. In the center of the Andean

322 region, the season durations are on average 80 days for the first wet season, 60 to 100 days
323 for the first dry season, 70 to 100 days for the second wet season and 90 to 120 days for the
324 second dry season. In the south of the Andean region season durations are on average 120 to

325 160 days for the first wet season, 120 days for the first dry season, 40 to 80 days for the sec-
326 ond wet season and 30 to 100 days for the second dry season. In the foothills of the western
327 mountain range, the season durations are on average 50 to 80 days for the first wet season, 60
328 to 120 days for the first dry season, 70 to 100 days for the second wet season and 90 to 120

329 days for the second dry season. In general, the wet seasons are shorter than the dry seasons
330 (see maps in the Supplementary Information).

331 Mean daily rainfall: for the four rainy seasons, the highest values occur on the foothills

332 of the western mountain range in the Pacific region. In this region, the averages of the daily
333 rain of the two wet seasons are of the same order and higher than 12 mm/day and up to 28
334 mm/day. The highest values are in two places. One is close to 3◦ N, near Los Farallones Na-

335 tional Park of Cali and the other near 6◦ N by the city of Quibdó. On the other hand, the two
336 dry seasons present differences, with more notable reductions in rainfall in the second dry
337 season. However, some areas of the Pacific region do not show notable variations through-
338 out the year. In the Andean region, the second wet season is more intense than the first, while

339 the dry season varies depending on location. Average daily rain is lower in the north of the
340 region in the second dry season. However, it is lower in the first dry season in the center and
341 south of the region. For the portion of the Caribbean region classified under this regime the
342 highest and lowest daily rains occur in the second wet season and the second dry season re-

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343 spectively, with average values of 6 to 12 mm/day and 0 mm/day (see maps in the Supple-
344 mentary Information).

345 Figure 6 for the bimodal regime shows that the beginning of the first rainy season has a

346 pattern that begins in the south of the Andean region in February, and moves north in April.
347 The explanation of this movement can be the translation of the continental ITCZ that has a
348 geometry in the form of a disk whose center follows the apparent trajectory of the sun with
349 some lag. The start of the second wet season feels the effect in the opposite direction when

350 the ITCZ moves to the south. The beginning of the season begins in August in the north of
351 the region, and it is only until October that the season begins in the south of the region.

363 4.2.3 Pacific Regime

364 In this region of the bio-geographical Chocó, there are unimodal, bimodal, and asea-
365 sonal regimes. The country highest rainfall values occur in this region, probably one of the
366 world’s rainiest place [Poveda and Mesa, 2000]. Because of those exceptional climatic char-

367 acteristics, we analyzed it separately from the other regions.

368 In the corresponding part of Figure 6, one can observe that the bimodal stations south
369 of the 5◦ N have a behavior similar to that of the Andean bimodal region regarding start, cen-

370 troid, and end of the rainy seasons. However, Figure 7 shows high values practically through-
371 out the year. Besides, there are unimodal stations both north and south of the region. Those
372 to the north have centroid in August, while those to the south during the first semester, start-

373 ing in March. The maximum of the precipitation agrees approximately with the report of
374 Snow [1976, F. 15, p. 372]. The change of regime and time of the year for the occurrence
375 of the season centroids between the areas further north and the area further south in the re-
376 gion is an essential clue to the physical interpretation of these observations. Also, as seen in

377 Figure 7 the precipitation values are high year-round.

378 4.2.4 Transition Zones

379 Regimes in several places came out from the regional patterns of seasonality: La Gua-
380 jira, the southwest of Colombia, Serranía de la Macarena, the north of the Andean region
381 and the center of the Caribbean region. These areas, except La Guajira, are located in tran-
382 sition zones between two regions with unimodal and bimodal regimes. La Guajira, as before

383 mentioned in section 4, is a rather dry region and the occurrence of sporadic rain events in

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38.0

36.0
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365

352 Figure 6. The top panel shows the start, center and end day of the year of the rainy seasons (horizontal

353 axis) as a function of latitude (vertical axis) for the IDEAM rain gauges with the bimodal regime. Center

354 panel: same for stations with the unimodal regime. Bottom panel the same for the Pacific region. For each

355 site, a gray horizontal line covers each rainy season. The figure also overlays the apparent position of the sun

356 (dashed line) and contours of mean daily solar shortwave radiation (MJm−2 ). Centroids of the rainy season

357 for each region are color-coded: Andes region in black, the Caribbean region in light green, Amazon region

358 in red, Orinoco region in dark green. For the Pacific region, the centroids are color-coded according to the

359 regime: the unimodal regime in black and the bimodal regime in blue.

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15

10

Latitude [�]
5

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365

5.0 7.5 10.0 12.5 15.0

360 Figure 7. Average daily precipitation (mm/d) as a function of latitude and day of the year for the IDEAM

361 rain gauges with the bimodal regime (upper panel), the unimodal regime (center panel) and for the Pacific

362 region (lower panel).

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384 the first half of some years makes it difficult to identify the type of regime and the seasons’
385 parameters. In summary, transition zones are more complicated to interpret.

386 5 Discussion

387 Although [Snow, 1976] presents a good description of the basic climatology of Colom-
388 bia, we still need to put all the pieces together to have a satisfactory explanation of the whole

389 seasonality of rainfall.

390 The main factor used so far to explain seasonality is the variation of humidity advec-
391 tion by the easterly trade winds and the ITCZ latitudinal displacement during the year asso-
392 ciated with the latitudinal migration of solar radiation [Guhl, 1974; Snow, 1976; Mesa et al.,

393 1997; Mejía et al., 1999; León et al., 2000; Schneider et al., 2014; Hurtado and Mesa, 2014].
394 Although the ITCZ control is fundamental, it does not explain all the complexity, except for
395 the Andean region where this argument can explain the seasonal distribution of rain with its

396 bimodal regime. In Figures 6 and 7, the bimodal panels illustrate this influence well and how
397 latitude is a factor that influences the start date and duration of each season. However, the to-
398 pographic factor is fundamental to complement this explanation. Note also that not the entire
399 Andean region has a bimodal regime as discussed below.

400 Hoyos et al. [2017] identify that the recirculation of moisture from the same Andean
401 region can contribute to local precipitation up to 17% according to the model used for its
402 estimation. This considerable contribution has a clear bimodal annual cycle that follows the

403 cycle of radiation. This component reinforces the assertion that the march of the ITCZ is the
404 primary control of the bimodal regime in the Andes region.

405 However, the unimodal regime requires other explanations in addition to the migration

406 of the ITCZ. As can be seen from the analysis of the panels corresponding to the unimodal
407 classification in Figures 6 and 7, the latitudinal variation of the start, centroid, and end of the
408 rainy season do not follow the apparent position of the sun nor the ITCZ position that lags
409 the sun.

410 Because of its complexity, we considered the Pacific region separately and consid-
411 ered first the rest of the regions with a unimodal regime, that is, the eastern region (Amazon,
412 Orinoco) and the northern zone (the Caribbean and northern foothills of the Andean region).

413 Briefly, the explanation rests on the annual cycle of the South American low-level jet that
414 brings moisture convergence from the tropical north Atlantic that meets the Andes moun-

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415 tain range and re-curve to the south [Marengo et al., 2004; Poveda et al., 2014]. Its annual
416 variability has characteristics similar to standard monsoon systems. For South America, this
417 topic has several antecedents [Liebmann and Mechoso, 2011; Marengo et al., 2001; Wang
418 and Fu, 2002; Espinoza et al., 2015]. For example, Espinoza et al. [2015] concludes that the

419 low-level north winds that cross the equator between the Andes and the Guyanese Massif
420 reach speeds of up to 15 m/s, play a fundamental role in the modulation of the variability of
421 precipitation in low-lying areas.

422 Wang and Fu [2002] define an index of the winds that cross the equator as the average
423 wind at 925 hPa in the rectangle 5◦ N–5◦ S, 65–75◦ W. This index has notable monthly and
424 daytime variability, by its magnitude and characteristics can be classified as an index for the

425 low-level jet stream occurring parallel to the Eastern branch of the Andes Cordillera. The
426 monthly average of the index has an annual cycle with negative values (north winds) between
427 October and March with a peak in December and positive values (winds from the south) be-
428 tween April and September, with a peak in June. This index explains a high percentage of

429 the seasonal variance of precipitation (37%) in the South America region studied by Wang
430 and Fu [2002]. The rainy season in our region, April-September, coincides with the southern
431 wind in this index. That is, the convergence of low-level humidity is maximum at this time of

432 the year and minimum when the northerly winds cross over the region taking the rain further
433 south, to the center and south of the Amazon.

434 On the other hand, in the Pacific region, two low-level jets bring much moisture to the
435 region, the Chocó-Jet and the low-level Caribbean jet that crosses the Isthmus of Panama

436 and re-curves and penetrates the Pacific coast of Colombian [Poveda and Mesa, 1999, 2000;
437 Amador et al., 2006; Amador, 2008]. The annual cycle of these currents and their latitudinal
438 migration are fundamental to explain the seasonality of rainfall in the region. The Chocó-Jet

439 is active in the second semester of the year, when it migrates north from the equator, reaching
440 its maximum position approximately in November at 5◦ N, while the Caribbean jet is more
441 active in the first semester. These low-level jets act in shifts to bring atmospheric moisture
442 to the region. Consequences are the occurrence of such high values of precipitation, the ab-

443 sence of seasonality (it rains all the time) and the coexistence of stations with unimodal and
444 bimodal regimes, and their latitudinal distribution. This alternation also explains the season
445 in which maximum rainfall occurs both in the southern part of the region as well as in the

446 north part.

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447 The role of topography is crucial to explain the seasonality of the rain. The three low-
448 level jets that play a role to explain rain distribution in the country, namely the Chocó, the
449 Caribbean and the South American low-level jets, do not reach across the barriers either
450 from the west or the east. In some areas of less high topography, the jets reach to penetrate,

451 for example in the northern foothills of the Andes region. Besides depending on the time
452 of the year and the direction of the prevailing low to mid-level winds, the mountain ranges
453 induce ascending winds and precipitation or shadows in the descending branch. In sum-

454 mary, the affirmation of Snow [1976] that characterizes the Andean region as a dry island
455 surrounded by regions of higher rainfall is correct.

456 Substantially, the analysis of the moisture sources presented for the Andean region

457 coincides with Hoyos et al. [2017] for the Magdalena basin, which they call the Caribbean
458 because its mouth goes into the Caribbean Sea. Note that the difference in terminology is be-
459 cause they use watersheds while the territorial division we use is that of geographic regions.
460 The Magdalena basin is in good proportion part of the Andes.

461 Inter-annual variability is an important issue. During wet years, associated with La
462 Niña phase of ENSO in Colombia [Poveda et al., 2014], the wet seasons become not only
463 more intense but also longer, affecting the onset or the end of the season or both. In some

464 years or places, this intensification may mean that two wet season join and the intermediate
465 dry one weakens or even is not present. During dry years, usually associated with El Niño
466 years in Colombia, the opposite happens. Dry seasons may lengthen, mid wet season weak-
467 ens and may even disappear. These general observations deserve rigorous analysis.

468 6 Conclusions

469 We used a simple, novel method to calculate the start, end, and length of the rainy and
470 dry seasons in Colombia. This method, in conjunction with the daily resolution of the data,
471 allowed to go beyond the current state of the art in the study of the annual cycle of precipita-
472 tion in Colombia upholding the existence of two regimes: unimodal and bimodal. We identi-

473 fied four rainfall regimes: unimodal, bimodal, mixed and aseasonal or seasonally invariant.

474 The unimodal regime, i.e., one rainy and one dry season, occurs in most of the coun-
475 try, specifically in the low areas of the Orinoco, Amazon and Caribbean regions. In unimodal

476 regimes, the FVE by the annual component is much greater than the FVE by the semian-
477 nual component. The occurrence of the unimodal regime is probably related to the so-called

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478 South American monsoon [Novello et al., 2017]. The bimodal regime predominates in the
479 Andean region. In bimodal regimes the FVE of the annual and semiannual components are
480 similar. This regime is related to mountainous areas and controlled by the double pass of the
481 ITCZ which in turn depends on astronomical controls. Transition zones between unimodal

482 and bimodal regimes often show a mixed regime, i.e., a regime with four seasons where one
483 of the rainy/dry seasons is not a rainy/dry season but a retreat of a great dry/rainy season.
484 There are aseasonal regimes in some areas of the Pacific region. These areas showed almost

485 constant or uniform rainfall throughout the year. For the aseasonal regime sites, the FVE of
486 both annual and semiannual components are very low. The alternation of the moisture sup-
487 ply by the low-level Chocó and Caribbean jets explains this aseasonal regime in the Pacific
488 region.

489 Most existing rain gauges are in the Andes region, while all other regions have a lower
490 station density. This disparity in density implies some skepticism about our conclusions for
491 other regions different than the Andes. Nevertheless, they are consistent with the limited

492 available rain gauge data, with previous studies, with the leading physical interpretation of
493 the Colombian climate and with the precipitation fields reconstructed using other observa-
494 tional methods such as the CHIRPS dataset which besides rain gauges includes satellite ob-
495 servations from the TRMM mission [NASA, 2007].

496 This paper is a complete description of rainfall seasonality in Colombia. We present

497 duration, start, and end of each season comprehensively. Also, we present the geographic
498 patterns of the different regimes and the changes in duration or starting and ending dates.

499 Our physical interpretation of the seasonality is coherent with previous literature on the sub-
500 ject. Besides the double pass of the ITCZ, the role of the low-level jets and the topographic
501 barriers to prevent the influx of moisture to the Andes region seem clear to explain the re-

502 gion’s mid of the year dry season. Although there is a good description, we think a more
503 dynamical explanation of the South American Monsoon is still needed. Probably the Andes
504 and the Amazon rainforest play a role in that theory.

505 The results of this study have the potential to support the planning of agriculture, wa-
506 ter and electricity supply, public health, water-related disasters management and the devel-
507 opment and validation of large-scale climate models. Furthermore, extending this study to
508 other countries could enlighten the understanding of the regional hydro-climatic patterns.

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509 Future studies may consider the inter-annual variability of the annual regime. In other
510 words, how the primary macroclimatic controls of the Colombian precipitation like ENSO
511 influence the start, end, and length of the rainy and dry seasons. Finally, long-term variabil-
512 ity and climate change are also signals that need an examination to deepen our understanding

513 of the rainfall phenomenon in Colombia and tropical America. These critical issues are be-
514 yond our objectives in this paper.

515 Acronyms

516 CHIRPS Precipitation dataset selected for the Colombian territory and whose acronym
517 comes from Climate Hazards group Infra-Red Precipitation with Station data

518 DOS Duration of a Season

519 DOY Day of year

520 FVE Fraction of Variance Explained

521 IDEAM Instituto de Estudios Ambientales

522 ITCZ Intertropical Convergence Zone

523 LTAC Long Term Annual Cycle. For a given rain gauge LTAC is a series of 365 values, one
524 for each day of the year. Each one is the arithmetic mean of the daily precipitation
525 values falling on that same date during all the years of the record

526 RMSE Root Mean Square Error

527 RRMSE Relative Root Mean Square Error

528 SOS Start date of a Season

529 Acknowledgments
530 Support from Universidad Nacional de Colombia is greatly acknowledged. IDEAM, the

531 Colombian Institute for Environmental Studies provided the rain gauge records. CHIRPS
532 data-set was produced by The Climate Hazards Group and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS),
533 with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the National
534 Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

535 Administration (NOAA). We also appreciate comments and suggestions from the referees
536 and editors in charge of the paper.

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