Seasonal variability in tropical and subtropical convective and stratiform precipitation of the East Asian monsoon

Abstract

Seasonal variations in tropical and subtropical convective and stratiform precipitation of the East Asian monsoon are analyzed using 10-year (1998–2007) Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) rain products (2A25). Datasets from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) 24 general circulation models (GCMs) are evaluated using TRMM PR rain products in terms of their ability to simulate convective and stratiform precipitation and their deficiencies. The results show that Asian monsoon convective and stratiform precipitation increases significantly after onset of the summer monsoon, but the percentage of convective precipitation clearly decreases over tropical areas while it increases in subtropical regions. The GCMs simulate well the seasonal variation in the contribution of Asian monsoon subtropical convective precipitation to the total rainfall; however, the simulated convective precipitation amount is high while the simulated stratiform precipitation amount is low relative to TRMM measurements, especially over the Asian monsoon tropical region. There is simultaneous TRMM-observed convective and stratiform precipitation in space and time, but GCMs cannot simulate this relationship between convective and stratiform precipitation, resulting in the deficiency of stratiform precipitation simulations.