The Definition and Characteristics of Regional Rainfall Events Demonstrated by Warm Season Precipitation over the Beijing Plain

Abstract

Abstract In this study, a regional rainfall event (RRE) is defined by observed rainfall at multiple, well-distributed stations in a given area. Meanwhile, a regional rainfall coefficient (RRC), which could be used to classify local rain (LR) and regional rain (RR) in the given area, is defined to quantify the spatiotemporal variation of rainfall events. As a key parameter describing the spread of rainfall, RRC, together with duration and intensity, presents an effort to explore more complete spatiotemporal organization and evolution of RREs. Preliminary analyses of RREs over the Beijing plain reveal new, interesting characteristics of rainfall. The RRC of RRE increases with longer duration and stronger intensity. Most of the RREs with maximum peak rainfall intensity below 2 mm h−1 or duration shorter than 3 h have RRC less than 0.4, indicating that these events are not uniformly spread over the region. Thus, they are reasonably classified into LR. RREs with RRC above 0.5 could be classified into RR, which usually lasts longer than 4 h and has primary peak rainfall occurring from 1700 to 0600 LST. For most of the intense long-duration RR, evolutions of RRC and rainfall intensity are not consistent. The RRC reaches a maximum a few hours after the peak intensity was reached. The results of this study enrich the understanding of rainfall processes and provide new insight into understanding and quantifying the space–time characteristics of rainfall. These findings have great potential to further evaluate cloud and precipitation physics as well as their parameterizations in numerical models.