Dust Reduction - Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) Movement

  • Released Monday, April 19th, 2021
  • Updated Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at 12:17AM
  • ID: 4896

This visualization depicts the northern trend of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). A horizontal black line indicates the current ITCZ centroid for the longitudinal extents of the study region, which moves with GPCP precipitation data. The northernmost extent of the ITCZ is indicated with a thin white line for each year. The bold white line represents the northernmost overall extent. The grey box represents the study region used to calculate the ITCZ centroid. A region of dust optical depth data is shown in orange off the coast of Africa.

Data Sources:


  • Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) - monthly precipitation dataset from 1979-present combines observations and satellite precipitation data into 2.5°x2.5° global grids. GPCP Precipitation data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site here

  • Dust Optical Depth. Evan, A.T. and Mukhopadhyay, S., 2010. African dust over the northern tropical Atlantic: 1955–2008. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 49(11), pp.2213-2229.

This visualization depicts the northern trend of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). A horizontal black line indicates the current ITCZ centroid for the longitudinal extents of the study region, which moves with GPCP precipitation data. The northernmost extent of the ITCZ is indicated with a thin white line for each year. The bold white line represents the northernmost overall extent. The grey box represents the study region used to calculate the ITCZ centroid.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Datasets used in this visualization

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