Using hourly station rain‐gauge data during 1991–2004, we studied the relation between rainfall duration and diurnal variation during the warm season (May to September) over the central eastern China (105–120°E, 26–36°N). Our result shows that more than 60% of the total rainfall in the central eastern China comes from long‐duration rainfall events (an event that lasts longer than 6 hours). The long‐duration rainfall events tend to have their maximum hourly rainfall around early morning, while short‐duration rainfall events (an event of 1–3 hours in duration) have their peak rainfall around late afternoon. This contrast explains the two peaks in the diurnal variation of averaged precipitation over the central eastern China shown in previous studies.
[1] Over the Tibetan Plateau, solar heating often produces strong convective instability in the atmosphere. Using 3 years (1998 -2000) of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar data, our investigations revealed a tower mast shape of precipitation over the Plateau in both height-longitude and height-latitude cross-sections. High rain rate center over the Plateau is located above 6km as a tower penetrating into the midtroposphere against the nearby background, implying a unique latent heating source injecting directly to the middle atmosphere. Results indicate that there are more isolated rain cells over the Plateau than its nearby regions, and the strongest diurnal cycle of rainfall existing over the Plateau with a peak around 1600 and a valley around 0500 local time, indicating the dominance of convective clouds caused by solar heating. It is also found that the TRMM algorithm might have misclassified weak convections as stratiform rains. Citation:
Based on the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) data, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) surface synoptic observations, spatial distributions and seasonal variations of total cloudiness and fractional cloud amount of high, middle and low clouds over China are examined. It is found that low clouds mainly appear along the southeast coast of China, middle clouds dominate southern China and high clouds mainly occur over northern China. Seasonal variations of convective clouds over northern China, southern China and the Tibetan Plateau are similar, reaching a maximum in summer and a minimum in winter; whereas the seasonal variation of stratiform clouds displays large spatial variation, with opposite phase in northern and southern China.
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