This article conducts a case study describing the radiational and morphological characteristics of a Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) responsible for the highest precipitations rates observed over Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil, within the period spanning from November 2002 to February 2003. To that end, the FORecasting and TRAcking of the evolution of Cloud Clusters (ForTrACC) was used as the main tool. The selected case refers to the February 19 and 20, 2003 MCSevent that caused high rainfall rates reported by the surface meteorological stations. This MCS displayed a life span of 23 hours, initiating at 13 UTC of February 19, reaching its mature stage at 04 UTC and dissipating at 11:30 UTC of the following day. During this entire period the MCS displayed cold tops with brightnesstemperatures below 210 K. The behaviour of the MCS followed that described in typical conceptual models, where early strong convection is followed by lower values of brightness temperature, and then display area expansion in its mature stage. We also found distinct relations between minimum brightness temperatures obtained from satellite imagery and precipitation rates reported at the surface during the life cycle of the MCS. The conclusion is that the data collected from only two surface stations could not allow the determination of the clear-cut agreement between the radiative characteristics of the MCS observed by satellite and precipitation rates measured at the surface.
Mesoscale Convective System; morphologic; brightness temperature; precipitation rates
