Abstract
Many studies have reported on the trends of precipitation in Mid-Eastern China (EC). However, the trends of convective and stratiform precipitation are still unknown. Here, we examine the trends of summer convective and stratiform precipitation in EC from 2002 to 2012 on the basis of the TRMM observations. Results revealed that the rain frequency (RF) for both convective and stratiform precipitation increased in majority regions of Southern EC (SEC), but decreased in Northwest part of Northern EC (NEC). The decreasing rate of RF for stratiform precipitation in NEC is twice as much as that for convective precipitation, while the increase of convective precipitation in SEC is more evident than stratiform precipitation. The rain rate (RR) exhibited a decreasing trend in most portions of EC for both convective and stratiform precipitation. In SEC, neither PW nor WVT has good ability in explaining the precipitation variability. However, in NEC, PW is closely correlated to convective RF and WVT is more closely related to stratiform RF.
Highlights
Precipitation is a critical process in global hydrologic cycle and an important indicator of climate change
The summer stratiform rain frequency (RF) varies from 3.2% to 5%, almost 3 times larger than that of convective precipitation (0.56%~1.4%), which is consistent with previous research[23]
Regions of high convective and stratiform RF values locate along the Yangtze River, as well as part of Southern EC (SEC), which is probably associated with Asian summer monsoon[10]
Summary
Precipitation is a critical process in global hydrologic cycle and an important indicator of climate change. Previous studies have revealed the trends of precipitation in China using rain gauge data. A few studies have examined the trends of “precipitation intensity”[11,12] as defined by the daily precipitation amount (unit: mm/day), which is really the daily rain accumulation. This definition may cause overestimation of precipitation intensity to some extent. In this study, using the TRMM PR dataset 2A25 (see Methods for data details), we examined the changes of summer (June, July, and August) convective and stratiform precipitation in EC (26–35°N, 113–122°E), including the trends of rain rate (RR) and rain frequency (RF) in the period 2002–2012. Maps were generated in NCAR Command Language (NCL)[42]
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