An Abelian model for rainfall

Statistical analyses of long-term records of daily rain suggest that rain phenomena might be a manifestation of self-organized criticality. In this work the essential mechanisms of rain phenomena, the growth of droplets inside a cloud and the subsequent rainfall, are described by an Abelian sandpile model of self-organized criticality. Several simulations support the existence of scale invariance. The introduction of variations of the basic model, to provide a better description of the phenomena, does not alter the critical behavior.