Characterization of atmospheric processes related to hydro meteorological extreme events over the south central Andes The significant environmental and socioeconomic consequences of hydrometeorological extreme events such as extreme rainfall are constituted as a most important motivation for analyzing these events in the south central Andes of NW Argentina. The steep topographic and climatic gradients and their interactions frequently lead to the formation of deep convective storms and consequently trigger extreme rainfall generation. In this dissertation I focus on identifying the dominant climatic variables and atmospheric conditions and their spatiotemporal variability leading to deep convection and extreme rainfall in the south central Andes. This dissertation first examines the significant contribution of temperature on atmospheric humidity (dew point temperature Td) and on convection (convective available potential energy CAPE) for deep convective storms and hence extreme rainfall along the topographic and climatic gradients. It was found that both climatic variables play an important role in extreme rainfall generation. However ...