COMPARISON OF CROSS-MOUNTAIN PRECIPITATION PROFILES FROM AROUND THE WORLD

It is not well known how the precipitation regime of the Southern Alps, New Zealand compares to that which is observed in other mountainous regions of the world. A common form of representing precipitation distribution in the Southern Alps is through cross-mountain average annual precipitation transects (Chinn 1979; Griffiths and McSaveney 1983; Sinclair et al. 1997; Henderson and Thompson 1999). These transects show a similar form with a peak in average annual precipitation associated with the first barrier the mountains present to the predominant wind, then declining totals further to the lee. A new precipitation transect