A unique program is developed for improving heavy rainfall forecasts over southern China during the presummer rainy season through field campaigns and research on physical mechanisms and convection-permitting modeling.

Extreme precipitation is an issue of worldwide concern, but its microphysics remain elusive. The convective and microphysical characteristics of extreme precipitation features (EPFs) in a monsoon coastal area (South China) are investigated mainly using 2‐year observations from a dual‐polarization radar and distrometers. The EPFs are accompanied by a broad range of convective intensity, and categorized into the “intense”, “moderate”, and “weak” convection accounting for 17.3%, 48.6% and 34.1% of the total population, respectively. The EPFs with weaker convection show weakened size sorting and less breakup of large raindrops, but a larger ratio of liquid water path to ice water path and more prominent coalescence warm‐rain process. All the three categories are dominated by the coalescence in the liquid‐phase processes, and have much more populous raindrops than the “continental” with a mean size larger than the “maritime” regime. These results improve our understanding of extreme precipitation from the microphysical perspective.

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The initiation of deep moist convection, which we usually refer to as convection initiation (CI), dramatically affects the subsequent convective storm development and occurrence of severe weather (Markowski & Richardson, 2010). It has long been recognized that convection results from the multi-scale coupling effects of synoptic and local circulations and underlying surfaces, such as coastlines, mountains, or urban agglomeration (