scholarly journals Seasonal Variation of the Diurnal Cycle of Rainfall in Southern Contiguous China

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (22) ◽  
pp. 6036-6043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Li ◽  
Rucong Yu ◽  
Tianjun Zhou

Abstract Hourly station rain gauge data are employed to study the seasonal variation of the diurnal cycle of rainfall in southern contiguous China. The results show a robust seasonal variation of the rainfall diurnal cycle, which is dependent both on region and duration. Difference in the diurnal cycle of rainfall is found in the following two neighboring regions: southwestern China (region A) and southeastern contiguous China (region B). The diurnal cycle of annual mean precipitation in region A tends to reach the maximum in either midnight or early morning, while precipitation in region B has a late-afternoon peak. In contrast with the weak seasonal variation of the diurnal phases of precipitation in region A, the rainfall peak in region B shifts sharply from late afternoon in warm seasons to early morning in cold seasons. Rainfall events in south China are classified into short- (1–3 h) and long-duration (more than 6 h) events. Short-duration precipitation in both regions reaches the maximum in late afternoon in warm seasons and peaks in either midnight or early morning in cold seasons, but the late-afternoon peak in region B exists during February–October, while that in region A only exists during May–September. More distinct differences between regions A and B are found in the long-duration rainfall events. The long-duration events in region A show dominant midnight or early morning peaks in all seasons. But in region B, the late-afternoon peak exists during July–September. Possible reasons for the difference in the diurnal cycle of rainfall between the two regions are discussed. The different cloud radiative forcing over regions A and B might contribute to this difference.

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 1537-1550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Li ◽  
Tianru Chen ◽  
Nina Li

AbstractThe climatic features of the diurnally varying summer precipitation over and around the central Tian Shan Mountains are investigated. Both the hourly rainfall data observed at eight stations along a transect across the mountains and the convective index derived from the satellite data show that there are three distinct regimes: the early morning peak at stations to the south of the mountains, the late afternoon peak at stations on the mountains, and the night peak at stations to the north of the mountains. The relation between regimes of diurnal variation is analyzed. By defining the regional rainfall event (RRE), the initial stations of each RRE are recorded. The early morning rainfall in the southern periphery of the mountains is triggered locally in the southern basin. Both the late afternoon peak over the mountains and the night peak in the northern periphery are influenced by mountain-originated rainfall events. These rainfall events appear over the mountains in the afternoon, and some of them move northward and lead to the nocturnal rainfall in the northern basin. The triggering of convection in the afternoon over the mountains and that in the early morning in the southern basin is related to the diurnally varying wind and thermodynamic conditions over and around the mountains. Low-level convergence with thermodynamic instability appears at noon (night) over the mountains (in the southern basin) just before the start of the convection.


2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (21) ◽  
pp. 5683-5690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Li ◽  
Rucong Yu ◽  
Weihua Yuan ◽  
Haoming Chen

Abstract Duration is a key feature of rainfall events that is closely related to rainfall mechanisms and influences. This study analyzes the decadal change in the duration-related characteristics of late-summer (July–August) precipitation over eastern China during 1966–2005. Accompanying the southern-flooding and northern-drought (SFND) pattern of rainfall amount over the eastern China in recent decades, the duration-related rainfall structure also experienced significant changes. In North China, the frequency of short duration rainfall events decreased and their intensity increased. The decadal decreases of rainfall amount over North China are largely contributed by long duration rainfall events, especially those occurring between midnight and morning. In the mid-to-lower reaches of the Yangtze River valley, both the frequency and amount of long duration precipitation have significantly increased. The mean and maximum duration time of late-summer precipitation has increased 0.85 and 7.61 h, respectively. Considerable increases of rainfall amount of two kinds of precipitation, the short and medium duration rainfall events in the late afternoon and the long duration rainfall events in the early morning, contribute to the “southern-flooding.” Despite the differences between the northern and southern region, there is a common feature of their decadal precipitation changes that the intensity of short duration rainfall in the late afternoon has shown an increasing trend.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1659-1673 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. L. Jenkins ◽  
P. M. Forster ◽  
L. S. Jackson

Abstract. The marine-cloud brightening geoengineering technique has been suggested as a possible means of counteracting the positive radiative forcing associated with anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 increases. The focus of this study is to quantify the albedo response to aerosols injected into marine stratocumulus cloud from a point source at different times of day. We use a cloud-resolving model to investigate both weakly precipitating and non-precipitating regimes. Injection into both regimes induces a first indirect aerosol effect. Additionally, the weakly precipitating regime shows evidence of liquid water path gain associated with a second indirect aerosol effect that contributes to a more negative radiative forcing, and cloud changes indicative of a regime change to more persistent cloud. This results in a cloud albedo increase up to six times larger than in the non-precipitating case. These indirect effects show considerable variation with injection at different times in the diurnal cycle. For the weakly precipitating case, aerosol injection results in domain average increases in cloud albedo of 0.28 and 0.17 in the early and mid morning (03:00:00 local time (LT) and 08:00:00 LT respectively) and 0.01 in the evening (18:00:00 LT). No cloud develops when injecting into the cloud-free early afternoon (13:00:00 LT). However, the all-sky albedo increases (which include both the indirect and direct aerosol effects) are highest for early morning injection (0.11). Mid-morning and daytime injections produce increases of 0.06, with the direct aerosol effect compensating for the lack of cloud albedo perturbation during the cloud-free early afternoon. Evening injection results in an increase of 0.04. For the weakly precipitating case considered, the optimal injection time for planetary albedo response is the early morning. Here, the cloud has more opportunity develop into a more persistent non-precipitating regime prior to the dissipative effects of solar heating. The effectiveness of the sea-spray injection method is highly sensitive to diurnal injection time and the direct aerosol effect of an intense aerosol point source. Studies which ignore these factors could overstate the effectiveness of the marine cloud brightening technique.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 734
Author(s):  
Ricardo Almeida de Siqueira ◽  
Daniel Alejandro Vila ◽  
João Maria de Sousa Afonso

The knowledge of the diurnal cycle of precipitation is of extreme relevance to understanding the physical/dynamic processes associated with the spatial and temporal distribution of precipitation. The main difficulty of this task is the lack of surface precipitation information over certain regions on an hourly time scale and the low spatial representativeness of these data (normally surface gauges). In order to overcome these difficulties, the main objective of this study is to create a 3-h precipitation accumulation database from the gauge-adjusted daily regional precipitation products to resolve the diurnal cycle properly. This study also proposes to evaluate different methodologies for partitioning gauge-adjusted daily precipitation products, i.e., a product made by the combination of satellite estimates and surface gauge observations, into 3-h precipitation accumulation. Two methodologies based on the calculation of a conversion factor F between a daily gauge-adjusted product, combined scheme (CoSch, hereafter), and a non-gauge-adjusted one, the integrated multi-satellite retrievals for GPM (IMERG)-Early (IMERG, hereafter) were tested for this research. Hourly rain gauge stations for the period of 2015–2018 over Brazil were used to assess the performance of the proposed methodologies over the whole region and five sub-regions with homogeneous precipitation regimes. Standard statistical metrics and categorical indices related with the capability to detect rainfall events were used to compare the ability of each product to represent the diurnal cycle. The results show that the new 3-h CoSch products show better agreement with rainfall gauge stations when compared with IMERG, better capturing the diurnal cycle of precipitation. The biggest improvement was over northeastern region close to the coast, where IMERG was not able to capture the diurnal cycle properly. One of the proposed methodologies (CoSchB) performed better on the critical success index and equitable threat score metrics, suggesting that this is the best product over the two. The downside, when compared with the other methodology (CoSchA), was a slight increase in the values of bias and mean absolute error, but still at acceptable levels.


2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (9) ◽  
pp. 3307-3320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weihua Yuan ◽  
Rucong Yu ◽  
Minghua Zhang ◽  
Wuyin Lin ◽  
Haoming Chen ◽  
...  

Using hourly rain gauge records and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 3B42 from 1998 to 2006, the authors present an analysis of the diurnal characteristics of summer rainfall over subtropical East Asia. The study shows that there are four different regimes of distinct diurnal variation of rainfall in both the rain gauge and the satellite data. They are located over the Tibetan Plateau with late-afternoon and midnight peaks, in the western China plain with midnight to early-morning peaks, in the eastern China plain with double peaks in late afternoon and early morning, and over the East China Sea with an early-morning peak. No propagation of diurnal phases is found from the land to the ocean across the coastlines. The different diurnal regimes are highly correlated with the inhomogeneous underlying surface, such as the plateau, plain, and ocean, with physical mechanisms consistent with the large-scale “mountain–valley” and “land–sea” breezes and convective instability. These diurnal characteristics over subtropical East Asia can be used as diagnostic metrics to evaluate the physical parameterization and hydrological cycle of climate models over East Asia.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 24205-24241
Author(s):  
A. K. L. Jenkins ◽  
P. M. Forster ◽  
L. S. Jackson

Abstract. The marine-cloud brightening geoengineering technique has been suggested as a~possible means of counteracting the positive radiative forcing associated with anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 increases. The focus of this study is to quantify the albedo response to aerosols injected into marine stratocumulus cloud from a point source at different times of day. We use a cloud-resolving model to investigate both weakly precipitating and non-precipitating regimes. Injection into both regimes induces a first indirect aerosol effect. Additionally, the weakly precipitating regime shows evidence of the second indirect aerosol effect and leads to cloud changes indicative of a regime change to more persistent cloud. This results in a cloud albedo increase up to six times larger than in the non-precipitating case. These indirect effects show considerable variation with injection at different times in the diurnal cycle. For the weakly precipitating case, aerosol injection results in average increases in cloud albedo of 0.28 and 0.17 in the early and mid morning (03:00:00 local time (LT) and 08:00:00 LT, respectively) and 0.01 in the evening (18:00:00 LT). No cloud develops when injecting into the cloud-free day (13:00:00 LT). However, the all-sky albedo increases (which include both the indirect and direct aerosol effects) are highest for early morning injection (0.11). Mid-morning and daytime injections produce increases of 0.06, with the direct aerosol effect compensating for the lack of cloud albedo perturbation during the cloud-free day. Evening injection results in an increase of 0.04. Penetration and accumulation of aerosols above the cloud top may lead to a reduction of all-sky albedo that tempers the cloud albedo increases. The apparent direct aerosol tempering effect increases with injection rate, although not enough to overcome the increase in all-sky planetary albedo resulting from increases in cloud albedo. For the weakly precipitating case considered, the optimal injection time for planetary albedo response is the early morning. Here, the cloud has more opportunity develop into a more persistent non-precipitating regime prior to the dissipative effects of solar heating. The effectiveness of the sea-spray injection method is highly sensitive to diurnal injection time and the direct aerosol effect of an intense aerosol point source. Studies which ignore these factors could overstate the effectiveness of the marine cloud brightening technique.


2008 ◽  
Vol 136 (3) ◽  
pp. 913-928 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Esteban ◽  
Yi-Leng Chen

Abstract The effects of trade wind strength and the diurnal heating cycle on the production of summer trade wind rainfall on the windward side of the island of Hawaii are examined from the data collected from the Hawaiian Rainband Project (HaRP) during 11 July–24 August 1990 and from National Weather Service Hydronet and National Climatic Data Center rain gauge data during 11 July–24 August for the years 1997–2000. For strong trades, the daily rainfall totals on the windward lowlands west of Hilo are higher with a nocturnal maximum there due to the convergence of the katabatic flow and the incoming decelerating trade wind flow, and orographic lifting aloft. The maximum rainfall axis shifts farther inland when trades are stronger. Except in the late afternoon hours, rainfall amounts on the windward side are higher when trades are stronger. For weak trades (≤5 m s−1), the rainfall distributions have a pronounced late afternoon maximum on the windward slopes due to the development of anabatic winds. The nocturnal rainfall over the windward lowlands and the early morning coastal rainfall are lower when trades are weaker.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 905-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haoming Chen ◽  
Rucong Yu ◽  
Jian Li ◽  
Weihua Yuan ◽  
Tianjun Zhou

Abstract Hourly observational records and 6-hourly reanalysis data were used to investigate the influences of large-scale forcings on the diurnal variation of summer rainfall along the Yangtze River (YR). The results show that long-duration (more than six hours) rainfall events dominate the summer rainfall along the YR. These events tend to start during the night and to peak after several hours of development. The eastward-delayed initiation of the nocturnal long-duration rainfall events is thought to be due to the diurnal clockwise rotation of the low-tropospheric circulation, especially the accelerated nocturnal southwesterlies. In the early evening, the anomalous easterly flow toward the Tibetan Plateau (TP) causes low-level convergence over the Plateau’s eastern slope that induces the formation of rainfall in the upper YR valley. The anomalous wind sequentially rotates clockwise to a southerly flow at midnight and accelerates the meridional wind in the middle valley, resulting in the initiation of rainfall between 2300 and 0300 LST. In the early morning, the accelerated southwesterlies in southern China, when combined with decelerated winds in the north of the YR, causes a strong convergence along the YR and contributes to the early morning rainfall in the lower valley. Furthermore, the development of the convection systems is suppressed in the afternoon by the mid- and low-level warm advection downstream from the TP. This helps explain why long-duration events do not typically start in the afternoon in the upper YR valley.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (11) ◽  
pp. 4543-4562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Ciesielski ◽  
Richard H. Johnson ◽  
Wayne H. Schubert ◽  
James H. Ruppert

Abstract During the 2011 special observing period of the Dynamics of the Madden–Julian Oscillation (DYNAMO) field experiment, two sounding arrays were established over the central Indian Ocean, one north and one south of the equator, referred to here as the NSA and SSA, respectively. Three-hourly soundings from these arrays augmented by observations of radiation and rainfall are used to investigate the diurnal cycle of ITCZ convection during the MJO suppressed phase. During the first half of October, when convection was suppressed over the NSA but prominent over the SSA, the circulation over the sounding arrays could be characterized as a local Hadley cell. Strong rising motion was present within the ITCZ extending across the SSA with compensating subsidence over the NSA. A prominent diurnal pulsing of this cell was observed, impacting conditions on both sides of the equator, with the cell running strongest in the early morning hours (0500–0800 LT) and notably weakening later in the day (1700–2000 LT). The declining daytime subsidence over the NSA may have assisted the moistening of the low to midtroposphere there during the pre-onset stage of the MJO. Apparent heating Q1 within the ITCZ exhibited a diurnal evolution from early morning bottom-heavy profiles to weaker daytime top-heavy profiles, indicating a progression from convective to stratiform precipitation. Making use of the weak temperature gradient approximation, results suggest that both horizontal radiative heating gradients and direct cloud radiative forcing have an important influence on diurnal variations of vertical motion and convection within the ITCZ.


Author(s):  
Mengke Zhang ◽  
Jian Li ◽  
Nina Li

AbstractFine-scale characteristics of summer precipitation over Cang Mountain, a long and narrow mountain with a quasi-north-south orientation in Southwest China, are studied based on station and radar data. Three kinds of rainfall processes are classified according to the initial stations of regional rainfall events (RREs) by utilizing minute-scale rain gauge data. RREs initiating in the western part of Cang Mountain exhibit eastward evolution and tend to reach their maximum rainfall intensity on the mountaintop. The results indicate differences in the precipitation evolution characteristics between short-duration (1–3 h) and long-duration (at least 6 h) events. Short-duration events begin farther from the mountaintop and then propagate eastward, while long-duration events remain longer around the mountaintop. RREs that initiate from the eastern part of Cang Mountain display westward propagation and frequently reach their maximum rainfall intensity over the eastern slope of the mountain. Among them, short-duration events tend to propagate farther west of Cang Mountain at high speeds, but the westward evolution of long-duration events is mainly confined to the eastern part of Cang Mountain. For mountaintop-originated RREs, precipitation quickly reaches its maximum intensity after it starts and then continues for a long time around the mountaintop during the period from late afternoon to early morning. These findings provide references for the fine-scale prediction of precipitation evolution in small-scale mountainous areas.


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