Assessment of diurnal variation of summer precipitation over the Qilian Mountains based on an hourly merged dataset from 2008 to 2014

Abstract

To investigate the diurnal variation of summer precipitation in the Qilian Mountains in the northeast Tibetan Plateau, the hourly precipitation amount for this region during the summers of 2008–2014 are analyzed using an hourly merged precipitation product at 0.1°×0.1° resolution. The main results are as follows. (1) The spatial distribution and temporal variation of mean hourly precipitation amount and frequency are generally similar and hourly precipitations in the eastern and middle portions are larger and more frequent than that in the western portion. The high value area of precipitation intensity is obviously different from that of precipitation amount and frequency. (2) The spatial distribution of daytime precipitation is generally similar to that of nighttime precipitation, and the daytime precipitation is heavier than the nighttime precipitation. (3) The change rate of precipitation has a maximum at 20:00 Beijing time, and a minimum at 12:00. The hourly precipitation amount significantly correlated with frequency, especially for the middle and eastern portions.